


Living Someone Else's Life

by andacus



Series: What Happens in Bangkok Totally Doesn't Stay in Bangkok. [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Darcy Centric, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Friendship, Kidnapping, Mommy Issues, Past Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Post Avengers (Movie), Sexual Content, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 18:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andacus/pseuds/andacus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Darcy is just trying to live her life in the midst of all this chaos (And, boy, is there ever chaos.) but the universe... well, the universe is one twisted bitch.</p><p>Or the one where Darcy's mother chooses the very worst time to have a heart to heart about her father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Darcy is four years old the first time her mother catches her with her pudgy little hands inside the VCR. Her favorite Elmo tape is stuck and Darcy is so worried that she won’t be able to get it out and then she’ll never get to watch it again and then she won’t get to watch it on Friday nights when she has to stay with Gertie, because Gertie is mean and her hair is blue and it isn’t even that cool shade of blue like cousin Penny. So, she decides to just fix it.

“What are you doing?” Darcy’s mom yells and she’s very angry. 

Realizing that her mom probably thinks she broke the VCR, Darcy smiles and proudly holds up the newly freed tape. “It was stuck. I’m fixing it.”

“Darcy Ann Lewis get up from there and go to your room.”

Darcy stares, confused. Her mom is using the I-am-so-mad voice and that voice only gets used sometimes when Darcy has lied or that one time she punched Timmy Roscoe, but he deserved it.

“Now!” Her mom says and Darcy scrambles to her feet and runs to her room, clutching the tape to her chest.

She is crying, sprawled on her Scooby-Doo sheets, when her mom finds her later. She isn’t mad anymore, but she looks very serious. Darcy doesn’t like the serious face. Darcy likes the fun and happy face.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” she says. “I was scared you would electrocute yourself.”

“I unplugged it,” Darcy says, because duh and she rubs a sleeve across her snotty nose.

“Baby, I need you to do something for me, okay? If something is broken, tell me and we’ll have it fixed. I don’t want you taking things apart, okay? “

Darcy nods solemnly. “Okay.”

Her promise lasts all of three weeks, but this time she’s got the old radio parts hidden in her closet so her mom doesn’t see and get mad, because it really isn’t anything to get mad over. Besides, the radio is already old and they don’t need to have it fixed. She just wants to see how it works.

***

She’s seven when she builds a little robot cat that obeys commands. It’s for the science fair and she feels a little like she’s cheating because it’s really only a remote controlled car that she’s fiddled with, but everyone is so impressed that she decides it’s okay.

Her teacher tells her mom how smart she is and how very clever her project is, but there are tight lines around her mom’s mouth and she never once tells Darcy that she did a good job.

That’s okay though, because Darcy didn’t do it for her. Darcy did it just to do it.

Years later, she’ll pinpoint that moment as when she unknowingly packed about a hundred suitcases full of mommy issues and started her emotional baggage collection.

***

They skip her ahead in math and science and computers and when she starts sixth grade, she has to go from the middle school to the high school for half of her day. It’s scary as hell and she hates it a little. It’s confusing to be so good at something and resent it _because_ she’s so good at it. It makes her different and the only people who seem to think that’s a good thing are her teachers. She doesn’t want to be good at it and thinks about failing some tests just to get sent back, but she can’t help tinkering, she can’t stop seeing the patterns and the connections in her head and some part of her just refuses to lie about it. So she finds a better hiding spot than her closet (Mr. Isenhart devotes a corner of the auto shop garage to her) and she loiters there most of the time.

The unforeseen and awesome side effect to this is that, of course, auto shop adopts her as their mascot and she picks up a frightening amount of vocabulary, culture and attitude from them. Darcy’s mother is less thrilled.

It’s raining (of course) the day she’s caught in the auto shop, half inside the old Buick she suspects Mr. Isenhart is secretly sabotaging just to test her ability to fix it.

“Darcy!”

She jumps, smacks her head on the hood and groans. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m working on a project for class. Why?”

Vanessa Lewis scowls and scrunches her nose and Darcy knows she’s done for. “I talked with Mr. Isenhart. He gushed and gushed about how brilliant you are and how nice it is to have someone so talented in his shop.”

“Wow. That’s rude,” she says, defaulting to sarcasm.

“You’re _not taking his class!_ ” She’s yelling and Darcy can just feel her whole system crumble. There is no way her mother is letting this go, no way she’s going to get to keep her time in the shop.

“What’s the big deal? Most parents are stoked if their kid’s a genius.” She hates the g word. She’s always hated the g word. It isn’t right and it isn’t accurate. There are many things Darcy is thoroughly average at. Navigating her relationship with her mother is apparently the top of that list.

She isn’t great at English or History, but she likes them, maybe because she isn’t as good at them. Her brain doesn’t just fill the blank spaces when she’s learning about Roman mythology or the correct use of the semicolon. These subjects are harder, trickier, they’re based on things like people and emotion and rules that follow no discernable line of logic (Seriously, that whole i before e, but only sometimes thing is crap.) and some obstinate, stubborn part of her wants to conquer these subjects more than she wants to lean on what she’s good at. 

It will take her years to learn that she’s lying to herself.

***

“Political Science. At Berkeley,” she tells her mother, holding a breath, hoping for a positive reaction. She gets one. Vanessa Lewis is so proud of her daughter’s choice that she throws a party and doesn’t even complain when a bunch of Darcy’s friends from auto shop show up.

She’s sixteen when she leaves home and finds herself in California. It’s not as ridiculous and wild as she’s been told and she settles into a life of studying and partying and finally feeling like she’s in some way the same as the people around her. Word starts to spread that she’s a wizard with electronics and math and somehow she starts making so much cash on the side from tutoring gigs that she can take some of the financial pressure off her mom.

“Well, at least your talents can come to some good use,” her mom says and Darcy hangs up on her, because wow… just wow.

***

Tony Stark goes missing on a Tuesday. She only remembers because she was supposed to watch and compare three different news programs and she left it to the last minute, so of course, the world’s richest, smartest train wreck gets himself kidnapped and/or blown up and there’s no way to pretend she didn’t do the assignment the night before it was due, because fuck If anyone is talking about anything else.

It will not be the last time he inconveniences and annoys her, though it is the last time his death does.

Her mother calls three weeks later, after Darcy’s moved on to other media shit storms and train wrecks on the news. Vanessa starts talking and Darcy knows something is wrong. Her mother is babbling and stuttering and it’s starting to scare Darcy a bit, when Vanessa finally just says, “I have to talk to you about your father.”

Here’s the thing: Darcy’s father died when she was very, very small and Vanessa Lewis never actually recovered from his death and Darcy is not so cruel as to bring the subject up. She has one photo of him, grinning at her while her tiny baby hands tug at clumps of his hair. Sometimes, she wishes she had known him, but mostly, Darcy doesn’t think about it. She cannot miss what she never knew.

“Pete wasn’t your father. He was a good man and he loved you, but he wasn’t your father.”

“Oh-kay,” Darcy says because her mother is obviously drunk or insane. Or drunk _and_ insane.

“I had a very short fling with a man I met in Thailand –“

“When the hell were you in Thailand?”

“It was a graduation trip. Anyway, there was this man – complete asshole – but annoyingly charming and I was drunk, so one thing led to another –“

“Ugh, gross.”

“And we spent pretty much the entire ten days in his hotel room and nine months later, there you were.”

“Mom, this is a terrible conversation.”

“It was Tony Stark.”

Darcy makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort and then chokes. She doesn’t believe her mother, not even a little, but she’s suddenly very concerned for her mental state. And her blood alcohol level.

“Are you okay?” Her mother asks and Darcy really does laugh now.

“Me? Are _you_ okay? Did you just hear yourself? Did you take some Ambien again, because you’re talking crazy talk.”

“I have not taken anything. He’s dead, Darcy. It’s been three weeks and he’s probably dead and I don’t know… I just feel really horrible for never saying anything to anyone, because maybe he wanted to know or maybe you wanted to know…” She trails off and she sounds so lost that Darcy feels the first little sparks of doubt. Her mother really thinks she had a wild and fertile week with Tony fucking Stark.

“You’re serious.” 

“Of course I’m serious! Why the hell would I lie about this?!”

It takes, like, Xena levels of strength not to point out that she lied about it for 21 years, but Darcy manages it. “Okay, okay. Thanks for telling me. I’m going to go process this.”

They hang up and Darcy decides her mother is losing it. There was no way in hell that her mom got knocked up by… she can’t even think it.

So, she makes it a point to check in with her mom more often and she starts calling the neighbor to make sure there isn’t anything weird going on, but she never believes it. 

And when Stark shows back up, the returned prodigal son, her mother says nothing, makes no mention of any kind about wild paternity claims, and that’s proof enough for Darcy.

***

The internship in Puente Antiguo is sort of an accident. The truth is, she likes PoliSci on a theoretical level (Or maybe she just likes the idea of it.), but she sucks at it. She doesn’t care enough to remember dates or names well, she loses track of which party wants what, the election process is Greek to her and the very idea of networking makes her want to scream. So she works for it, she struggles to pull the Cs and occasional Bs and she gets passed over for every internship she wants.

Desperate, she branches out, hoping to find something, anything. She happens across the description of Jane’s work and it catches her eye. It’s Astrophysics, which Darcy is so not involved or interested in, so it’s safe from her mother’s scrutiny. Not that she cares. Really.

It isn’t until she gets there and she sees the mountains of machinery cobbled together with paperclips and duct tape that she knows the universe is one twisted bitch.

Jane discovers Darcy’s penchant for machines and electronics and makes crazy eyes at her (which aren’t that different from her normal eyes) that Darcy takes to mean she’s excited. They rebuild a few of the… whatever they are, Darcy’s trying not to dig too deep into the manic explanations and descriptions that Jane launches into, and she finds herself really enjoying Jane and Erik (whenever he’s around) and even the people in this tiny back water town. And if she sometimes supes up the kitchen appliances it’s no one’s business.

***

Thor happens and she’s sort of shocked by how well she handles all of it. She’s lying on the roof after he leaves, Jane curled up next to her and Barton doing that bodyguard thing he does nearby, when she realizes she should probably be hyperventilating or panicking or being generally hysterical, at least.

She nudges Jane’s shoulder. “Are you in shock, because I think we should be in some sort of post life-altering-event shock or something.”

“No,” Jane says miserably, curling in on herself further.

“Hey, GI Joe,” Darcy says, twisting to look at Clint on the other side of the roof. “Shouldn’t we be freaking out?”

He shrugs. “Do you feel like freaking out?”

She thinks about it for a minute. “No.”

“Eh, you’re good,” he replies nonchalantly.

And, terrifyingly enough, for the first time since she was a scrawny kid in the back of an auto shop garage, she really is good. She’s better than good; she’s starting to be great.


	2. Chapter 1

Darcy’s gotten really, really good at compartmentalizing. She’s had to. One minute, she’s harping on Coulson about what the actual definition of “classified” is and making copies and talking to Lucy in Accounting about how they’re still not over the way Lost ended, but the next minute, they’re holed up in his office monitoring the latest tragedy as it strikes, attempting to manage the safety of the people trying to stop it. Life amid the confines of the Avengers Initiative is a frustrating series of starts and stops, and sometimes she thinks it’s going to drive her insane.

 

But it isn’t the disasters to be thwarted or attacks to be halted that make her crazy. Darcy loves the busy times, loves to be high on adrenaline and purpose. What she hates are days like today; days when there is nothing happening and too much time and space for her mind to wander into certain compartments of her brain that she’s trying not to explore.

 

Her brain’s been stuck on repeat for weeks, slowly grinding her into a pile of What-If scenarios and How-Do-I-Know-And-Never-Tell plans, which is stupid, because this whole situation is stupid. She tried dragging Jane and Thor to dinner and drinks, but ended up the third wheel with plenty of time to think. She tried watching bad science fiction movies with Clint (Which is doubly effective, because arms.) and that worked for a while, but as soon as she’d gone off to bed, her traitorous brain caught up to her. There was a failed effort to learn Italian, an abandoned attempt to learn Tai Chi, and an aborted plan to visit every museum in New York. All in all, she was failing like gangbusters.

 

“Darcy,” Coulson says from inside his office and she jumps up, happy to have a distraction that isn’t expense reports, because that is obviously not working. 

 

“What are you working on right now?” He asks, thumbing through a stack of papers.

 

She says: “Not killing Tony for handing in an expense report written on a napkin for - and I quote - ‘a billion dollars for world saving services rendered.’” She doesn’t say: “Trying to shake off some crazy story about Tony impregnating my mother twenty-four years ago.”

 

Coulson looks up at her, bland as ever. “Well, if you kill him, you have to explain to the world why and, while I think you’ll have some support, most everyone is going to be pretty annoyed.”

 

“Fury would hide me.”

 

“Likely.”

 

Darcy smiles. “What do you need, Boss?”

 

“Go down to Storage A5 and find me the file on Aaron Stover. Here’s the case number.”

 

She takes the piece of paper and grabs her coat, because the storage rooms are always freezing, and makes her way to the elevator. She swipes her ID badge and presses her palm to the pad in the wall and she feels very Mission: Impossible about it despite doing it seven or eight times a day.

 

“Hey, JARVIS,” Darcy says, once the doors slide shut.

 

“Good morning, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS says back. “Heading home so soon?”

 

Darcy smiles because JARVIS is awesome and she loves him, even if he is a bodyless butler. “Nope. Headed to level one storage. Some ancient file for Coulson.”

 

JARVIS starts the elevator car’s descent and says: “Perhaps I could help you locate the file.”

 

“This is why you’re my favorite.” She reads off the case number and the name on the file and frowns when JARVIS make a thoughtful noise. “What?”

 

“I do not believe you want level one,” he says evenly. “My records indicate that that is a personnel file and should be on level two. It should be in B5, under S.”

 

The elevator ride is quick and she swipes her badge again and presses her palm to the glass plate again and in no time at all she’s wandering up the central aisle, looking for the rows marked S.

 

This is the moment that something occurs to her and she will later mark it as the moment when she lost her fool mind.

 

Personnel files. SHEILD files and Stark Industries files. Personal files full of personal information. That haven’t been converted to digital yet. Untraceable personnel files full of personal information.

 

Before she can talk herself out of it, Darcy’s scanning the shelves, singing the alphabet song in her head and tugging down the box marked STARK. There are three folders: Howard, Maria, Anthony. Nervously, she looks up and down the aisle, scared someone will see her. Seeing no one, she tucks Tony’s folder into the waistband of her pants and pulls her shirt over it. She shoves the box back in it’s spot and smoothes down her blouse.

 

“What are you doing?” A voice says and Darcy winces. She knows that voice and she knows there’s no talking her way out of this one. Just her luck, she’d get caught by the human lie detector. Or, well, one of them.

 

“Getting a file for Coulson,” Darcy says, turning to face the firing squad.

 

“Bullshit,” Clint says with a grin. “I know snooping when I see it.”

 

“Okay, you caught me, I was snooping. But I really am getting a file for Coulson.” Hoping against all hope that he’ll back off if she admits to her wrongdoing, Darcy walks past him and scans the shelves for the Stover file.

 

“Mmhmm,” he says, following her, sounding completely unconvinced. “And why are you snooping in the Stark file?”

 

“Morbid curiosity.” She finds the right file and tugs it from its spot.

 

“If you’re looking for some kind of medical explanation for him, it’s not in there. I’ve looked.”

 

She nearly laughs, but his eyes are still hard and she knows that look. He’s not letting this go.

 

Darcy tries another tactic. “Okay, fine. I was trying to settle a bet. Han in HR is convinced Tony is a cyborg and I was trying to disprove the theory.”

 

“That is the lamest cover story I have ever heard.”

 

It is. It really is.

 

She looks at him, considers for a moment and sighs. There is only one way out of this. “Okay, but I can’t tell you here.”

 

Clint cocks his head to the side and looks pensive. “Okay.” He draws the first syllable out, long and suspicious.

 

“And not upstairs. Too many ears.”

 

He looks very curious now, his eyebrows have inched halfway up his forehead and he nods. They agree to meet at his favorite pizza place at five-thirty and she’s about to turn to go when his hand lands on her shoulder. He pulls her around and she has to look up to meet his eyes, though he’s only four or five inches taller than she is, because he’s standing so close, breath practically mingling with her own. He pulls the edge of her shirt up and she sucks in a breath, her heart hammering so loud she can’t hear anything but the beating. And then he tugs the file out of her waistband and steps back.

 

“It’s a good thing you’re not a field agent, Lewis.” He shakes his head and tucks the folder under his arm, careful to hide the name on the tab. “I’ll smuggle this out of here for you. See you at six.”

 

“Five-thirty!” She calls after his retreating form.

 

“Right, because you’re ever on time for things.”


	3. Chapter 2

Clint’s right; she’s never on time for things. She makes it to Carlo’s at five-fifty and points out that she is, in fact, ten minutes early, and immediately orders a drink.

“I don’t think it counts when you’re early to being late.” He says.

Darcy laughs, trying not to choke on her whisky sour.

“Okay," Clint says. “What’s got you so spooked?”

“Nuh uh. I’m not drunk yet. I’m not telling until I’m drunk enough that it seems like a good idea.”

There’s an odd look on his face for a second and she doesn’t know what it is, but then it’s gone and he’s back to just looking curious and amused. “Well, in my experience, drunken ideas are always the best ideas.”

“Don’t mock me, Clint Barton, you’ll be taking that back within the hour. Trust me, you don’t want to know this.”

“Oh, God,” he says, looking horrified. “You didn’t… with Tony? You’re not, like…should you be drinking?”

But before he can follow that line of thinking any further, she’s waving frantic hands at him to stop, just stop. “No! God, no. What? Ew!”

“Thank God,” he says, relief written all over his face.

“That’s a terrible thing to accuse a lady of,” Darcy says, greedily welcoming the new cocktail that is placed in front of her. “Besides, Pepper’s got that pretty locked down.”

Clint says nothing, just watches her across the table. It’s disconcerting and she’s refusing to meet his eyes. Instead, she helps herself to a breadstick and pays very close attention to her shrinking beverage.

After several minutes, once she’s nearly finished with the second drink, Clint kicks her under the table and says, “I’m starting to worry.”

“Me too.”

“Darcy.”

The waiter comes by and Darcy orders just one more and a glass of water. Clint makes an executive decision and gets a large pizza with who knows what on it – Darcy isn’t listening – and another basket of bread sticks.

Her head has started to swim slightly, just enough that she’s less terrified of saying the words out loud, but only marginally so. Telling Clint, enlisting his help, was already decided; she’d made up her mind on that in the storage room. What she is struggling with now is how exactly to work up the courage to actually tell him. It’s easy to talk herself out of it, easy to tell herself it’s a crazy story that holds no merit whatsoever, but she’s been doing that for years, since long before she was actually face to face with Tony. And it was a hell of a lot easier to do before she started living in the same building, eating the same frozen waffles, secretly loving the asshole-with-a-heart thing he has going on… Oh, who is she kidding? There is no going back; she has to know.

“There may or may not be a possibility that Tony Stark is my biological father.”

They stare at each other for several long minutes. Clint’s face is still and impassive. It’s his spy face and she’s seen it deployed enough times to know that he’s running through some kind of super secret spy reaction algorithms. And then suddenly she’s laughing, imagining a flow chart unraveling in his brain for just such an occasion: Subject is drunk? Yes – No? If yes, is subject making wild and unreliable statements? Yes - No? If yes, are they within your ability to disprove? No? Contact Coulson and keep subject occupied.

The people in the booth next to them look curiously over and smile awkwardly, which only makes Darcy laugh harder. Clint looks blank still, but she thinks maybe his mouth twitches a little at the edges.

When the waiter drops off Darcy’s new drink, Clint looks up at him and says, “Tequila. Just go ahead and bring the bottle.” When he returns, Clint tells him to leave only one shot glass and gives Darcy a look. “Oh no you don’t, Lindsay Lohan. This bottle is for me.”

Darcy manages to relay what little information she has about her mother’s claim, her own mild horror at the idea of it all, and the very poorly thought out plan to find out once and for all. Clint manages to scan Tony’s file and admit that there is absolutely nothing helpful in it, except his blood type, which turns out to not be helpful at all. They both manage to get very, very drunk.

“How can all three of us have the same blood type?” Darcy asks, slouched in the booth, toying with the straw from her (Fourth? Fifth?) drink. 

“Genetics,” Clint says, screwing the top back on the half empty tequila bottle. 

“Hey, Hawkeye,” she slurs and holds up a middle finger. “Can you see this?” 

“We need a code word,” he decides, clearly ignoring her taunt. “We can’t talk about it in the tower or JARVIS will tattle.”

“Bangkok,” she says and dissolves into laughter. Again.

Clint sobers for a moment. “Darcy Lewis, product of drunken Bangkok,” he says seriously, before saluting with a breadstick.

“Allegedly! Innocent until proven guilty!”

He makes a joke about the words “guilty” and “Stark” being synonymous when someone whistles from the doorway. Darcy looks up and finds Natasha smirking at them, looking like he’s the cat who caught the canary. 

“Uh oh,” Darcy says. “Well, if I have to go, at least I’m drunk enough not to feel it.”

Darcy watches while they have one of those silent conversations that seem to consist entirely of eye movements and facial ticks and then Clint huffs and audibly grumps, “Fine.” 

Natasha drifts from the doorway like she was never there.

“She’s creepy,” Darcy says.

“You have no idea,” Clint replies, before sliding out of the booth. “Come on. It’s past cerfew.”

***

Luckily, there is no one in the common room when Darcy and Clint stumble out of the elevator. Okay, well, Darcy stumbles and Clint walks in a very straight, very sober-looking line. It’s very annoying.

Unluckily, half the household shows up a minute later. Darcy sits on one of the recliners and arranges herself in as sober a manner as she can, but ends up sort of plopping ungracefully and staying there. Clint, for his part, has apparently decided to hold up the wall by the hallway. Stupid spies. Stupid escape planning.

“Hey, Darcy,” Jane says. “When did you get back?”

“Just now.”

“You missed dinner. Steve made chicken alfredo,” Pepper adds, crossing to the neatly arranged crystal carafes on the wet bar. “Drink?”

Darcy says, “Yes,” at the same time Clint says, “No.” They share a look and he shakes his head at her, but Darcy doesn’t so much care and smiles defiantly at him. He shrugs and quirks his mouth up in an adorable little half smile and holy shitballs, when did she start thinking he was adorable?

“Darcy?”

“Huh?” 

Pepper is looking at her knowingly and then with no warning at all so is Tony, whom she’s been studiously ignoring since he walked in.

“Whoa,” Tony says. “Who sterilized Lewis?”

“Lewis sterilized Lewis,” she says.

“Jesus, kid, you’re practically flammable.” Tony smiles at her, amused, and Darcy has to bite her tongue so she won’t say something stupid.

“I think no on that drink,” Jane says to Pepper, cutting her eyes to Darcy.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I’m a growed up. I can get shloshed if I want to.”

“Amen!” Tony says, saluting.

“It’s Tuesday, you have to work tomorrow,” Jane says.

“The solution for a hangover is just to not sober up,” Tony adds.

“Were you drinking by yourself?” Asks Jane.

“Yes.” “No.” Darcy and Clint say together.

“Wait, what?” Tony says.

“Don’t get mad, I’m just worried.” Says Jane.

“Jesus, Barton, stop hiding in corners like that. When did you get there? When did he get there?” 

“He’s been there, Tony.” Pepper sighs.

“I _am_ mad. Stop being judgy,” Darcy says, annoyed.

“That’s not a word,” Jane says.

“Besides, I’m allowed to get drunk with boys if I want.”

“Boys?” Jane looks surprised.

“Or girls,” Tony adds.

“What boys?” Jane wants to know.

“Just one boy,” Darcy slurs.

“That boy,” Tony says, pointing accusingly at Clint. “The defendant was drunk with that boy right there.”

Clint just raises his eyebrows. His arms are crossed and he’s leaning casually against the wall, looking for all the world like he couldn’t be bothered to respond. And then he shrugs unapologetically and Darcy can’t hold in a snort.

“He’s shit faced, too,” Darcy says conspiratorially to Tony, as he perches on the arm of her chair. “He’s just really good at hiding it.”

“Aw, Jane, give the girl a break. She’s Coulson’s minion, she’s allowed to want to wallow in her sorrows sometimes.” Tony winks at her and Darcy laughs. “With boys. Although… I think you’re not really passing for a boy anymore, Barton. What are you? Fifty? Fifty-five?”

“You’re hilarious.” Clint steps away from the wall and steadily crosses the room, hauling Darcy up to standing. “Come on, Jane, I’ll do the heavy lifting, but you’re on damage control.”

“Twelve inches apart at all times,” Tony calls. “No inappropriate touching, Barton!”

“I can walk,” Darcy protests, but instead of trying to, she drops her head against Clint’s chest and lets him prop her up.

They meet Natasha in the hall on the way to Darcy’s apartment and she lifts one eyebrow, but says nothing.

Clint chuckles and Darcy swears she can feel the vibration down to her toes, and somehow she manages not to say that out loud. He smells like pizza and tequila and shaving cream and his whole chest reverberates when he talks. It reminds her of the cars in Mr. Isenhart’s garage and the way her first engine roared to life and suddenly she’s melancholy, her drunken playfulness vanishes and all she can think about is wasted potential and birthrights.


	4. Chapter 3

Darcy is, of course, horribly hungover the next morning, but Jane is curled up next to her and there is a glass of water and some Advil on her nightstand. Jane is snoring quietly so Darcy slips silently out of the bedroom, careful not to wake her.

She stays in the shower a long time, longer than needed, really, because the melancholy hasn’t washed off yet. By the time she drags herself out, she’s all pruned up and her hair is so clean it’s tangling, but she still feels miserable.

She hasn’t thought about life before college in a long, long time. It’s one of those things she’s stuffed neatly into a compartment and marked Do Not Open. Ever. She knows, despite avoiding the subject so fully, that she made all the wrong decisions until New Mexico, and she feels a sense of loss and regret and shame. She knows she squandered all of her opportunities chasing some imaginary badge of approval from her mother and that grates more than anything. 

Jane’s still asleep when Darcy leaves, dressed and ready to attempt functioning as a human. She doesn’t expect to succeed, but that’s okay. She’ll just blame Clint when Coulson busts her balls about it.

Steve is at the table with a mug of coffee and the newspaper when she trudges into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” he says happily, because Steve is a morning person and isn’t that lovely.

“What have I told you about your abhorrent cheerfulness?” Darcy asks, stuffing a piece of bread in the toaster.

Steve chuckles and refolds his paper. “I know, I know. It’s bringing everyone down.”

“Yes. Equal and opposite reactions, Cap.”

“So, I hear you had quite the night.”

“This place is worse than college. I swear, you superheroes are terrible gossips.”

There’s a smile on Cap’s face when she looks up from pouring a cup of coffee and she is surprised to find herself deeply suspicious. Darcy knows a loaded grin when she sees one.

“What?” 

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I’m just happy. That’s all.”

Eyes narrowed, she watches him stand and deposit his cup in the sink. He ruffles her hair as he passes her, but that appears to be the end of the conversation, because he says nothing more.

***

It’s nearly noon when it occurs to Darcy that she has no idea what happened to Tony’s file. The last thing she remembers about it, she was trying to make origami cranes out of his college transcripts.

She texts Clint: _Do you have the Bangkok file?_

The reply is almost immediate: _You lost it?!?!_

Darcy nearly hyperventilates as she types out a response: _You had it last!_

She doesn’t actually know if that’s true or not.

“Yeah, because I had to save it from your terrible drunken paper folding skills.”

Spinning in her seat, Darcy does her best to look like she gets snuck up on by silent killers all the time, which, to be fair, she sort of does.

“My paper folding skills are fine. Do you have it?”

Clint smirks. “I put it back in its rightful place this morning.” When she mutters a thank you, he nods in that weird way guys do when they’re acknowledging you but not really.

“How’s the head?” He asks, sitting on a low filing cabinet, kicking his feet up on her desk.

“Pounding,” Darcy replies and swats at his boots. “Feet, off!”

His feet drop to the floor with a heavy thud and he looks to where Coulson’s door is only slightly open. “Bossman in?”

“Nope. He’s with Fury all day, which works out great for my hangover.”

“So, you ready for phase two?”

Darcy whimpers, because she has no idea how in the world they’re going to pull this off. “No.”

Clint’s face softens and he looks suddenly years younger. It’s oddly endearing. “You could just tell him,” he says.

“No! Noooo.”

“Why not?”

Silence stretches between them a moment while she thinks about how to say that she doesn’t actually believe it, she thinks some asshole - albeit one with awesome genetics - lied to her mother and she was young and drunk enough to believe it.

Darcy says: “Because I think some asshole - albeit one with awesome genetics - lied to her and she was young and drunk enough to believe it.”

Okay, so she sucks at self editing.

“And,” Darcy continues, despite the way Clint’s face has gotten all hard angles again. “I don’t exactly know how to comes to terms with _that_ reality on my own, let alone T... you know who knowing, because he’ll do that thing where he’s really kind and giving and sucks at hiding it and he’ll tell Pepper. And probably Bruce. And JARVIS.”

“JARVIS?”

“Shut up, he’s a people, too.”

“Thank you, Miss Lewis.”

“See?” She levels a look at Clint and he rolls his eyes.

Clint hops off the cabinet and kneels in front of her, warm hands on her knees. “Darce, it won’t matter either way. Whatever the truth is, it isn’t going to change who you are.”

She scoffs, because oh my god feelings and she is no good at those, like, at all. Anyway, what is he doing being all sincere and genuine and holy crap he’s close right now. “Okay, Obi Wan, I’ll remember that,” she says and makes a face she hopes he can’t tell is verging on panic.

Standing, he says, “Phase two, tonight at nine.” He drops a kiss on the top of her head as he leaves and something flutters in her belly.

***

Jane comes by at the end of the day with apology Mexican food and they hunker down in Darcy’s living room.

“So,” Jane says after they’ve eaten half of the tamales and all of the nachos. “What’s up with you and Clint?”

“Nothing.” Even as she says it, Darcy knows she’s not convincing. 

“You are a terrible liar.”

“Isn’t your giant, alien boyfriend looking for you? I thought I heard him bellowing.”

“Diversion will get you nowhere.”

“Really, it’s nothing. We’re friends. And he understands my Coulson wallowing.” Darcy says a silent thank you to Tony for the excuse and the phrasing. 

Jane doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t push it either and Darcy’s grateful. She manages to fake tired, which isn’t really all that fake, and sends Jane home to cuddle with her Norse god, which makes Darcy only fifteen minutes late to meet Clint.

He opens the door in a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt and Darcy’s heart absolutely doesn’t flutter and fall straight to her gut. Except that it totally does. She does her best to ignore how the jeans sit just a little too low on his hips and the sleeves of his shirt tighten just a little too much around his biceps. 

“We live one floor away from each other and still you manage to be late. How is that possible?” He’s leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and it’s really hard not to notice the thick cords of muscle there.

“Everyone’s gotta have a skill,” she says with a shrug. “So, what’s the plan?”

He reaches around and grabs a battered leather coat from the hook just inside the door. They leave the tower without running into anyone and find a dark booth at the back of a bar down the block. It’s the kind of place that looks cleaner than it actually is, the kind of place that you can tell is faking it, but Clint’s not the kind of guy who cares. At least Darcy assumes he’s not the type of guy who cares. He doesn’t really seem like he spends a lot of time considering...

“Hey, Lewis,” Clint says and she realizes he’s been talking and she has no idea what he was saying.

“Sorry. What?”

“Phase two,” Clint prompts, taking a drink of the coffee he’d ordered at some point. “You know, the part where we tell Tony.”

“Yeah, no.” 

“Okay, but when this all blows up in your face, don’t think I won’t say I told you so.”

“Barton, you are a real gentleman,” Darcy says, happy to wrap her hands around her own hot mug if for nothing else than comfort. “Chivalry is alive and kicking.”

“I’m from the midwest, you know. We are very gentlemanly.”

“And short.”

Clint’s face twists in surprise, followed immediately by mock hurt and he oversells a gasp of horror. “I’m compact, thank you very much.”

The waitress comes over and they order fries and onion rings and Clint asks for a whole carafe of coffee, which she’s more than happy to bring him, especially when he smiles and winks at her.

“Okay,” Darcy says a second later, unimpressed by his little charm act. “What’s the plan?”

“Recon. You won’t just ask and the obvious route, which is getting some of Tony’s DNA, is a little drastic.”

“Not to mention really fucking difficult.”

“Right. If you’re not a nineteen year old backpacker in Southeast Asia.”

“Clint!”

He smiles, but doesn’t look sorry at all. “Anyway, swiping some of Tony’s DNA should be the last option. So, if we can prove he wasn’t in Thailand... when was he supposed to be in Thailand?”

Darcy thinks a second, doing the math, and says: “January, 1989.”

“Right,” he says, looking sort of awkward. “If he wasn’t there, he couldn’t be the culprit.”

“And how do we do that?”

“By being nosey.”

***

“So, Bruce, when you have a second I want to pick your brain about traveling in Asia and the South Pacific.” Darcy says, as Bruce and Tony are wandering out of the elevator, one talking quietly and the other tapping an impatient rhythm on his leg. She can tell Tony’s nearly bursting with the effort of not interrupting. 

“Sure, Darcy. How about after dinner?”

“Nonsense!” Tony says, looking like he’s got a million things to say about the subject, because he’s probably got a million things to say about the subject. “Are you going somewhere, Lewis?”

Bruce rolls his eyes and Darcy smiles. 

“I’m thinking of going as a Congrats-you-survived-the-apocalypse trip. I’ve got my eye on Thailand.”

Bruce perks up and starts telling her about the little village that he stayed in and the beaches and the food and the hotels. He’s right in the middle of explaining something about public transit when Tony apparently cannot take it any longer.

“What part of _vacation_ did you miss here, Bruce? Hey, JARVIS, what’s the name of that place I stay at on that beach in Thailand? Is it in Phuket or Bangkok? You know, the one with the view of the tourists doing shrooms on the beach.”

“Sir, that was a private home that you fell asleep in and then purchased the following morning.” JARVIS actually sounds wary.

“Right! Love that place. It’s all yours, Darcy.”

Darcy’s heart is beating rapidly and she’s sure she’s sweating, which is just stupid. Of course he’s been to Thailand. He’s been to more countries than she can probably name. This does not mean anything and she needs to get a fucking grip. Digging her nails into her palm and forcing her voice not to waver, Darcy says, “I can’t decide if that’s awesome or horrible? When was that?”

“Umm, does it matter? It’s awesome. You should go.”

Trying a different tact, Darcy smirks at him. “Wait, do you even remember when you were there? Was this during a drug-fueled, pre-Pepper, downward spiral phase?”

“Probably. JARVIS?”

“I believe you have visited the country of Thailand seven times. First, for New Year celebrations in 1989 and most recently...”

But whatever the most recent information on Tony’s island exploits is, Darcy does not hear, because she is about to have a panic attack.


	5. Chapter 4

Bruce is arguing with Tony and Darcy is vaguely aware of the way he sounds half amused and half disapproving, but there are very loud bees or maybe crickets running a marathon in her head and it makes it hard to concentrate.

There’s a smile plastered on her face and she’s trying to look like she thinks they’re hilarious, but all she can think about is how badly she needs to get out of there. The excuse comes a moment later when Natasha steps out of the hall and Darcy clings to the chance of escape.

“Oh, hey, Natasha. Can I borrow you for a minute?” Darcy leaps up, says sorry to the guys and she’ll pick their brains more later (“Maybe not you, Tony.”) and drags Natasha back down the hall. It’s a testament to how weird she’s acting that Natasha lets her.

“Everything alright, Darcy?”

“No. Not really.” 

Natasha’s expression does not change when she starts speaking. “If this is about Clint, you don’t need to feel weird on my account.”

“No, of course it’s not... Wait... why would you tell me that?”

Natasha stares hard at her for a moment and then one corner of her lip quirks up. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.” She looks like she’s just stolen the Crown Jewels or killed Loki with a spoon - it’s a very pleased sort of expression and it’s a little terrifying.

The door behind them bangs open and Thor fills up the hallway, looking disheveled and smelling like socks.

“Hello,” he says happily, wiping sweat away from his face with a towel. “Natasha, I am glad to find you here. I had intended to ask you if you would spar with me with your Widow’s Bite.”

“Sure, big guy.”

Darcy pats Thor on the arm as she squeezes past him in the hallway and he gives her a goofy labrador retriever grin. 

Still set to panic mode, Darcy heads straight for Jane’s lab and a little distraction.

Jane’s lab is enormous and full of machines and engines and whirlygigs and whatsits and they all take up more space than anything else in the tower. Unless you count Tony’s cars. There are only a few of the old pieces of equipment from New Mexico left - the Stark bankroll has been kind to Jane and she took full advantage.

Something beeps to Darcy’s left, as she winds her way through the room. Jane is perched on a stool, puzzling out an equation on her tablet, but she doesn’t startle when Darcy comes up behind her.

“You’re stomping your feet,” Jane says without looking up. “That’s the Frustrated Darcy Walk and, yes, I said that with capitals. What’s wrong?”

Without really thinking about the consequences of her statement, because it’s better than telling Jane the actual reason that she’s frustrated, Darcy lies. Sort of. Okay, she deflects. “Natasha just tried to give me a pep talk about Clint because, and this is insane, I think she thinks we’re a thing.”

Jane makes a thoughtful noise and taps something on the screen. “He likes you, so I can see why she’d want to say something.”

“He does not _like_ me. Oh my god, are we twelve? Besides, he and Natasha were, like, soul mates or something and have you seen her? No one can follow that up. I think he’s ruined for all women. He’s probably just gay by default now.”

“Sometimes, you’re an idiot.” Jane finally looks up, her face is all understanding eyes and knowing expressions and Darcy glares at her. 

She spends the next several hours in the back of the lab taking things apart and putting them back together and when Jane kicks her out, she squirrels away a faulty geiger counter and several odds and ends from broken spectrometers and telescopes for tinkering later.

***

It’s after midnight by the time Darcy crawls into bed so it just figures that the alarm sounds at oh-three-hundred. Her phone starts ringing immediately after the blaring siren wakes her and she is unsurprised to hear Coulson’s voice on the other end. 

“Bring coffee with you,” he says and disconnects.

Groggily, she tugs on some clothes, which she’s certain don’t match and even less certain are clean, and makes her way to the kitchen. Pepper and Jane show up when the coffee’s about half brewed and they take up their usual spots at the counter.

“Do you have any details?” Pepper asks, folding her hands primly in front of her.

“Nope. Coulson just said bring coffee. I’ll keep you posted, though.” Darcy fills two Captain America travel mugs (They have Steve’s face staring up from the lid as though you’re enemy number one and Darcy loves them.) and heads straight for the elevator.

It’s full to bursting, but she stuffs herself in anyway, too tired and focused on being in work mode to feel awkward.

“Tony! I thought you were throwing those out,” Steve says, pointing at Darcy’s coffee mugs.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because they’re ridiculous.” Steve is blushing and glaring and it’s sort of adorable.

“Well, you’re ridiculous and I don’t throw you out.”

“I think they are a good likeness,” Thor says.

The elevator stops and Steve, Thor and Tony all file out, still bickering about the stupid mugs. Darcy makes a mental note never to tell Steve about fangirls and fanfiction.

Coulson is barricaded in his office and she smirks when he looks down at the face on his cup just a little too long.

“What’s the sitch?” She pulls a chair up to the secondary workstation adjacent to his desk and pulls the headset on. They run through the typical comms check and sitrep and customary Barton-Romanoff bickering, followed by the customary Cap telling everyone to knock it the fuck off. Without the cursing, of course. Darcy takes a second to text Jane and tell her the monster of the week looks like a giant squid mated with a sasquatch and had conjoined twins. 

As far as Avengers level baddies go, this guy is sort of lame. He’s awkward and cumbersome and not particularly strong, despite being about the size of a house.

“This creature is of a different realm,” Thor says, making Darcy’s ear hurt, because for fuck’s sake that man can’t use a volume lower than 11. “It is from Niflheimr. It is not a particularly vicious beast. I wonder as to its purpose here on Midgard.”

“Unless you can send it back, it doesn’t really matter,” Cap says and Thor agrees just as the beast sweeps a hairy tentacle through several shopfronts. 

The creature is defeated with no real trouble and Clint says, “That was easy,” just as Darcy looks at Coulson and finds him wearing a worried expression that means he’s steps ahead of the rest of them and those steps are slippery.

“Things are never this easy,” she says into their comms. “Sit tight a minute. We’re looking into something.”

Coulson already has several surveillance videos up, little boxes spread across his screen. The computer is doing most of the work, but neither one of them is very good at being idle, so they quietly watch as many as they can. A few moments go by and then the screen changes and there’s a face Darcy doesn’t know staring at the camera.

“It’s Azazel,” Coulson says. “Darcy, call Xavier.”

She does and she gets the typical, “I’m sending my team immediately,” reply, but she knows that means sometime in the next hour and until then, _her_ team is going it alone. And when did she start thinking of them as her team? 

“I’ve got, like... a hundred really fucking huge scorpions on 42nd,” Clint says and then follows it up with: “Ow. With lasers.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tony says.

“Yes, Stark, I sure am. This is hilarious shit.”

On one of the cameras, Darcy and Coulson watch as Clint spears one of the scorpions with an arrow, only to have to retreat when several of it’s companions turn to retaliate. Tony shows up a second later, shooting at them with repulsors and tiny, exploding ordinances. He’s actually laughing. At least until one of the bugs lands a decent shot and he’s nearly knocked out of the air.

“We’re going to need Bruce,” Cap says. “Tony, stop showboating and come give me a ride to 42nd.” 

A second passes and Darcy is certain Tony is going to make a lewd comment about coming and giving rides, and then Cap says a preemptive, “Don’t!” And Tony is silent.

They’ve pretty much wrapped up the man-eating scorpions issue when Azazel pops back up, grabs Tony and vanishes. The entire team dissolves into chaos for the longest five minutes of Darcy’s life. She’s acutely aware of how her breath is catching in her throat every time she tries to breathe and how her stomach feels like it’s full of lead. 

The X-Men show up and Xavier is with them and Darcy’s listening and watching and she can’t focus because no one knows where Tony went and Natasha’s pinned down inside a warehouse and won’t answer her comm and Clint’s jumped off another fucking building and what the hell is she going to do if they die?

Hulk has abandoned the fight and is leaping from building to building, looking for Tony, roaring especially angrily; now, neither Natasha nor Clint are answering hails; Cap and Thor are arguing with Logan... she’s got to get the hell out of there. Darcy can feel what tiny thread of calm she has left slipping. Her heart is hammering and she’s sweating. 

And she’s pissed the fuck off.

Her carefully constructed compartments have apparently crumbled and she should have seen that coming. Stupid slutty mom. Stupid Barton related feelings. Stupid superheroes. She’d had it all worked out; they were coworkers, passing acquaintances who she didn’t get attached to. And even with the giant Tony-shaped elephant in the room, she’d been able to lump him into the same box. But then Jane had shacked up with Thor and given Darcy her apartment and Steve had insisted everyone come to “Family Dinner” once a week and fuck. They’d snaked their way in, those bastards.

“We found Iron Man. Do you copy?” Clint’s voice crackles through her earpiece and a weight lifts from her shoulders. “There was some kind of jamming device. Blocked our transmissions and screwed with the suit.”

“Have you disabled the device?” Darcy asks, because she’s breathing again and some of her training apparently stuck.

“Sort of? I kinda blew it up. A little.”

***

“Jesus, Barton,” Tony is saying, as Darcy edges her way into the lab. “Did you have to kill it?”

“It’s kind of my thing.”

There is a hunk of metal and wires atop one of the tables and Tony is poking at it experimentally while Jane scowls and tutts. Bruce is nearby, looking haggard and clutching a cup of tea. Clint is still in his tac suit, but he’s dropped off his bow and quiver somewhere. There is a bloody gash on his arm and a bruise forming along his jaw. Natasha is perched on a stool, her suit is torn around the neck and she is sporting some impressive welts. Thor looks perfectly unruffled while he tries to operate the coffee maker.

Bruce is the only one who notices her walk in and in a moment of either supreme stupidity or supreme thankfulness, Darcy hugs him. She wants to hug Clint or Tony, because somehow she’s developed senses of worry that are decidedly Clint-and-Tony shaped, but there is too much raw emotion there and she just can’t do it. So she wraps her arms around Bruce, buries her face in his shirt and says nothing. He is clearly caught off guard because he does nothing for several long seconds, but soon enough he’s wound an arm around her shoulders and is patting her awkwardly.

Drawing back, she gives him a watery smile and then turns to the rest of the group (minus Cap, because he’s the only one who actually writes his incident reports). She looks them over and says: “Don’t you assholes ever scare me like that again.”

She leaves, because what else is there to do or say, and locks herself in her apartment, determined to sleep forever. 

It’s dark and quiet when she wakes up on the couch, a kink in her neck and a terrifying red-headed assassin perched on the coffee table.

“I thought you’d be Jane,” Darcy says, because she really had expected Jane to show up. Except when _Jane_ shows up for pep talks there is food and booze. Apparently, Natasha didn’t get that memo.

“I told her not to.” Natasha says and looks impassively at Darcy. “Might help to talk about it.”

Biting her lip and feeling so weird about the whole thing, Darcy burrows deeper under her ancient afghan and drags a huge throw pillow to her chest, squeezing it a little too hard.

“I’m not a worrier.”

Natasha laughs. “Yes, I can see that."

“It was just supposed to be all professional detachment all the time,” Darcy whines.

“So what changed?”

“It snuck up on me - the worry. Out of nowhere, I couldn’t stand the thought that someone might get hurt, because against my better judgement and all of my best efforts, I give a shit.” She buries her face in the pillow and grumbles.

“Ah, yes. Clint does tend to bring that out in people.”

“No! Well, yes, he’s complicated. But it’s not just Clint. Everyone. All of you, damn you.”

There is silence after that, which with most people would be attributed to uncertainty, but this is Natasha, so probably it’s some kind of super spy technique to get Darcy to spill her guts. Darcy isn’t sure, but what she is sure of is that she has no more to say about this.

“Darcy, can I ask you a question?”

“Only if I can choose not to answer.”

“Why is Clint complicated?”

She pulls the pillow off of her face and looks at Natasha, not that she could actually read the woman’s intentions from her face or body language, but Darcy looks for some indication of intent anyway. She finds nothing.

“Why are you asking?”

“He talks to me, you know,” Natasha says, standing up. “Tells me things, gets advice.”

And that’s when something clicks and Darcy can feel all of the blood rushing from her face. “The other day in the hallway? When you thought... Did he tell you we’re... uh... dating? Or something?”

Natasha is thoughtful a moment and then says, “He may be confused on exactly where the boundaries of your relationship lie.”

“Oh my god. Holy shit! How am I dating someone and not know I’m dating him?”

“Dating is a strong word," Natasha says.

"Oh my god!" Darcy reiterates.

"Clint’s an idiot,” Natasha says fondly. “But he’s our idiot. Take away all the swagger and confidence and he’s just a guy from the circus. He’s crap with women that he actually likes. Trust me though, the sex makes up for it - he’s great in the sack.” 

Darcy watches in extreme discomfort, as Natasha smiles over her shoulder and leaves the room. A moment later she hears the lock latch. It’s probably an indication of just how odd her life has become that the Black Widow locking her door from the outside actually strikes Darcy as a sign of affection instead of sparking the OH MY GOD SHE HAS COMPLETE ACCESS TO ME WHILE I SLEEP reaction.

***

Darcy does not, contrary to her instinct, go straight to wherever Clint is holed up and slap him for being presumptuous and weird and then drag him off to bed, which is sort of what she would really like to do. Instead, she drags herself to the bathroom to get cleaned up, drags herself to the kitchen to eat, and drags herself to work.

So what if her life appears to be falling apart and falling into place all at the same time? Who cares if there’s a guy that she really likes and he’s a little confused about their relationship? What guy isn’t? Who cares if the world’s richest superhero is probably her father? She’s definitely not the only one to have ever thought so.

Resolved, Darcy marches to her desk, sticks her head in to say a cheery hello to Coulson, sends off a text to Clint that she’s free for lunch and Indian sounds amazing, and e-mails Bruce that she would like to talk to him after work. 

Finally, she’s starting to feel on level ground again.

Noon rolls around and Darcy finds herself juggling cardboard containers of masala and vindaloo. Clint’s already staked out a bench near the duck pond when she finds him. They eat in relative silence, though it’s comfortable and Darcy finds herself happy to just sit and think. But it can’t last.

“How did Phase Two go?” He asks after he’s finished his lunch and she’s picking apart pieces of naan for the ducks.

“He was there.”

She can feel rather than see Clint shift to face her. He’s got one hand draped across the back of the bench and he’s started absently winding the ends of her hair between his fingers.

“You okay?” He asks, looking at her, though she’s still looking straight ahead.

“Yeah. It’s pretty much an inevitable conclusion at this point. I think I’ve made my peace with it.”

“That was easy.”

She does turn to look at him, now. His brow is all furrowed lines and his jaw is set. “I’ve been in denial long enough,” she tells him. “Which is why I’m going to enlist a little help from a certain genetically mutated doctor that I know.”

“Bruce?”

“Was that formed as a question?”

Clint shrugs. “I know sort of a lot of genetically mutated doctors.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “I’m sure he’s got a blood sample or something of Tony’s to run mine against.”

Clint tugs her hair lightly and smiles. He looks ten years younger when he grins like that and Darcy can’t help but grin back.

“Hey, Clint,” she says. “Are you going to kiss me or what?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up in a half smirk. “Nope,” he says and leans in close like he’s about to make a liar of himself. “Now you’re expecting it. Can’t kiss you when you’re expecting it.”

Darcy narrows her eyes at him, as he leans back. “That was smooth. When did you get smooth?”

“I’m smooth,” He says, completely self-satisfied. “I’m great at smooth.”

Darcy just grins wider.

They clean up their picnic and pretty soon she’s back at her desk, unkissed and still completely confused about where she and Clint stand, but also sort of okay with that. If there’s anything she’s learned from her mother, it is that you can’t force normal on Darcy Lewis. Why should this be any different?

Bruce shows up just as Coulson is leaving and they all ride the elevator down together. Coulson doesn’t live in the tower, despite being a part of the Avengers Initiative, which Darcy suspects is his futile effort to retain his sanity.

There is a small coffee and tea shop a few blocks up that she knows Bruce likes, so they head that direction. It’s August and the heat is oppressive and Bruce has shed his jacket and rolled his sleeves. He’s not a chatty guy, she’s come to understand, so Darcy takes no offence when he doesn’t speak. But they’re not really friends; they operate on something of a neighbor-like level, wherein she can pick his brain about things and he can totally borrow a DVD or come over for a beer. And, apparently, she can hug him after missions. Whatever. 

Unlike with Clint, this silence is not comfortable, it’s awkward and Darcy feels the need to fill it. “So, how is that mutant gene project coming?”

He rattles on for a minute about the project he’s been working on and by the time the barista calls their names, Darcy’s tuning out. Not that his project isn’t cool, it’s just sort of getting lost in the haze of Tony related thought tangles. 

They find a seat at the back of the coffee house, near the rear exit so Bruce feels like he can leave unimpeded if he needs to. Not that he will need to. Probably.

“So,” Bruce says once he’s got an iced tea and she’s sipping some kind of blended espresso thing that she can’t remember the name of, because holy shit she’s about to ask him to prove Tony Fucking Stark (yes, with a capital F) is her biological father.

“This is really fucking good,” Darcy says, drinking too fast and wincing at the brain freeze she’s given herself.

Bruce just lifts his eyebrows, calm and curious.

“Okay, so... the thing is... My mom told me this crazy story about some wild weekend she had after High School. Apparently, without any common sense. Or birth control. Nine months before I was born. With Tony.”

Bruce takes this all in with little more than a thoughtful set to his mouth and a small groove between his brows. He’s quiet for several minutes. Or maybe it’s only a few seconds. Darcy isn’t sure because time seems to stop.

“I see why we couldn’t discuss this back at the tower.” He looks at her with that doctor face, all understanding and sympathy. “I assume Tony doesn’t know.”

“No. Just Clint. And now you.”

Bruce nods and smiles very softly. “And you would like me to run a DNA test.” It isn’t a question.

“Yeah. If you can get away with it. I mean, JARVIS will tell, I’m sure he will.”

“I can get away with it. You’ll have to come by my lab so I can take a sample. Tony’s no problem. I can get a new sample from him without much fuss. That way I don’t have to pull an old one and tip JARVIS off.”

“Wow. I just... That’s sort of easy.”

“Sort of.” Bruce sips his drink and watches her for a moment. “What makes you think it’s worth going to the trouble? No offense to your mother, but if she could prove someone like Tony was her child’s father, why not do it years ago and get the money?”

Darcy scoffs. “Please, offend her more than that, she deserves much worse.” And then, for some god awful reason, she comes down with a case of verbal diarrhea. “I took apart and reassembled the VCR when I was four. I built my first engine when I was nine - in secret because it was strictly forbidden. I was miles ahead of everyone and my mother hated it, she conditioned it out of me. I mean, Jesus, I majored in Political Science, which I suck at, just to appease her, because what I was really good at reminded her of ending up pregnant and alone and she coped by getting up on this high horse and condemning everything she associated with Tony, not that I knew that then, but I can see it now. And I can’t keep pretending that it’s not true. I think I know it is, I think I’ve known it since I met the man. I just need some kind of closure or something.”

Bruce still has that soft, comforting look on his face, but there’s a hard edge to it. “Your mother doesn’t know where you are, does she?”

“She knows I’m in New York. She thinks I work for Senator Schumer.”

Half a laugh escapes him. “And if the test comes back as a non-match?”

“It won’t.”

***

She puts it off for a week, making up excuses about why she can’t go donate her DNA to the cause. Bruce, of course, humors her and it’s far too easy to fall back into daily life and just ignore the whole mess that she initiated. She feels a little bad about that, but not quite enough to get her ass into his lab.

Finally, it’s a combination of Clint and an oblivious Tony that kick her in the backside and remind her why she was so dead-set on doing it in the first place. 

Clint shows up at her door at midnight, looking like he’s just stepped out of a S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitment catalogue. He’s got fatigues on and he’s got his bow with him, though it’s in his bag at his feet. He’s clean shaven and his hair is brushed in something resembling a style, unlike the yeti-esque look he starts to get when he’s had too much down time, which has been a lot lately. 

“Hey, there,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “You should brush your hair more often.”

And then he kisses her. He steps up in her space, slides a hand behind her head and kisses her. It isn’t rough or aggressive. It isn’t desperate or wanton. It isn’t anything like that at all. His lips are slightly chapped and he tastes like toothpaste and it starts almost chaste; a slow, soft press of his mouth to hers. She suspects later, once her head has cleared, that he does this on purpose, that he lets her be the one to move things further. And of course she does. 

She steps closer, presses herself against him and winds her arms around his neck. It’s all it takes, just that little assent, that small confirmation that _yes, please, yes_ and he’s backing her into the room, kicking the door shut. Her fingers slide up into his hair and she can feel one of his hands slip under her shirt, hot on her skin.

He deepens the kiss, exploring, testing this new territory. Darcy is not one to hold back, so she draws his bottom lip through her teeth and slides a hand up the front of his shirt, lingers too long where his shirt was tucked into his pants, smiles against his mouth when he makes some kind of guttural sound. 

He spins them, presses her back against the door and lifts her up, draws her legs around his waist and it’s her turn for embarrassing noises, because _fuck._ She breaks away to breathe and he kisses a line down her throat to her shoulder and Darcy spares a thought to how glad she is that she wore the tank top with the tiny straps.

Without much warning he hoists her higher, his arms sliding under her ass and then his mouth is on her breast, sucking at her nipple through the fabric of her shirt and she most certainly does not whimper his name. He laughs against her skin and she shudders. She tightens her legs around his waist, her head back against the door, drawing in air like there’s not nearly enough and then someone says,

“Pardon, Agent Barton. Agent Coulson is attempting to override my protocols to locate you.”

“Fuck,” he says, pressing his face against her chest and letting her slip slowly to the floor.

“No. JARVIS, tell him we’re gone. Tell him Clint’s gone AWOL.” Darcy drags Clint’s mouth back to hers and smiles when he laughs against her lips.

“I’m afraid I’m not able to do that, Miss Lewis. Mr. Stark only permits me to lie if it benefits him.”

“Oh my god, JARVIS, you would not believe how much this benefits him.”

Someone knocks on the door and Darcy startles. Clint does not.

“It’s Tasha,” he says, making no move to open it. Instead, he just talks through the door. “Hold him off for two more minutes.”

“You’ve got one minute, Barton,” Natasha says. “And you better make it count.”

“Look, I’ve gotta go, but go see Bruce. It’s going to drive you crazy if you don’t. It already is. Besides, the whole hide in your room and take apart the electronics thing is terrifyingly Tony-like.”

“I haven’t been...” She trails off, because he raises an eyebrow and she remembers the stack of discarded circuit boards and wires on the desk in Jane’s lab and the Frankenstein’s Monster of a thing on her coffee table.

Darcy narrows her eyes at him and says, “You have a hell of a way with words, Barton.”

He smiles, kisses her hard and deep and steps back. “I’ll see you in two days.”

“Don’t get shot.”

Later, when she’s taken a cold shower and shaken off some of the giddy feeling, Darcy does exactly what any woman in her position would do: She makes a beeline for her best friend to spill all the details, because holy shit, that was awesome.

“Jane, my friend, I have a slightly R rated confession to make about myself and Agent Barton, who, in my humble opinion, should be naked, just, all of the time,” Darcy rambles, as she winds her way through Jane’s equipment.

“We’re all very happy for you two love birds - remember to use a condom - but the rest of us are working down here,” Tony says from behind one of the larger portable telescopes.

She blushes and startles.

“Darcy, you can tell me all the sordid details later - and, yes, I want to hear them - but right now we’re maybe on the verge of falling apart.”

“Why? What did Tony break?”

Tony, for his part, looks up at her half offended and half amused.

“We just need to get this...” Jane trails off, as she yanks on something inside the machine they’re bent over, which Darcy can now see is part of the mysterious device they dragged home from that last mission.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Darcy asks.

“Over there.” Jane points to the vacuum chamber - one of the few New Mexico Originals to make the long trip to New York.

“Why?” Darcy asks.

“We’re using it as a contamination chamber for the moment,” Jane supplies, tossing a pile of screws behind her.

“It’s radioactive?” Darcy asks.

“There was a Plutonium core, because apparently it doubles as a bomb. So we isolated that and now it lives in... that thing,” Tony says, waving a dismissive hand at the chamber. “Which appears to be broken. Sort of.”

“Talk to Darcy about that. She built it,” Jane says at the same time that Darcy says, “It’s not broken.”

Tony’s head pops up from where he was eyeing something on the other side of the device and he looks at her for a long minute. It’s odd to be regarded so fully by someone whose focus is never really on any one thing.

“You built that?” He asks, crossing the room to inspect the chamber.

“Yeah.” She doesn’t explain; he already knows what it is, dismissive of it’s recycled parts and creative structure, though he may be.

He walks around it, looking closely and narrowing his eyes more and more. Finally he says, “Huh.”

“What? You find something to pick apart?”

“No. It’s sort of genius, Lewis. What the hell are you doing wasting away as Coulson’s lacky?”

She wants to cry. She isn’t a crier, never has been, but in that moment, for some horrible and irrational reason, she wants to just sit down and cry. Instead, she looks Tony in the eye and says, “I have no idea.”

“JARVIS, what am I doing Monday?” Tony says, his fingers dancing over the control panel on her chamber. 

“You have a board meeting at oh-nine-hundred hours, which I am certain you won’t be attending, and you are scheduled for a briefing of new projects in R&D at noon, Sir.”

“Pencil Lewis in as a tag-along on that R&D walk through.”

Two hours later, Darcy finds herself sitting in Bruce’s lab while he sticks a fancy cotton swab in her mouth.

“Okay, that’s it. It’ll take a week or so. A colleague is letting me run it in his lab so I don’t have any interested parties getting too nosey.”

“Thanks. Sort of a lot.” Darcy wants to say more, but she’s already uncomfortable with this level of vulnerability so she doesn’t and hopes he understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy moley, this chapter is long. 
> 
> Thanks so much to those of you reading. I'm so flattered by the reception this fic is getting. You are all seriously the best.


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY IRON MAN DAY! If anyone is going today or has already gone... I am insanely jealous. I am seeing it Sunday, so no spoilers! Please don't reference movie stuff in comments or I will cry giant sad tears of woe. Thanks and I hope you like this chapter.

Darcy wakes up on Saturday morning with a gut full of butterflies and a head full of doubt. She takes Clint’s words to heart, though, and makes it a point to spend as much time as possible out of her apartment.

She wrangles Jane and Thor for a movie in the living room, which ends up drawing Bruce and Steve, too. She has two separate conversations with Pepper, neither of which are about the weather or Pepper’s awesome shoes. 

Sunday, she wakes up early and bakes muffins and morning buns and spends hours drinking coffee and laughing with everyone as they wander through the kitchen. And then she leaves the clean-up to Steve, who graciously says that it’s only fair if she cooked. 

She sits down to Family Dinner that night and she’s happy, despite how her insides still flutter with nerves and her head swims with too many possibilities and doubts to number. It’s okay though, because she knows all of that will lessen and she finds herself more than a little excited to just get to the end of this whole stupid thing.

They’re halfway through Bruce’s lasagne and more bottles of wine than should be strictly allowed, when Clint and Natasha stomp into the dining room, looking filthy and miserable and more than a little bloody.

“Don’t even think about it, Hunger Games,” Tony says, as Clint drags a chair out from the table. “You’re covered in communicable diseases and we don’t share those at the dinner table.”

“Only in your bed, right Tony?” Clint counters and sits anyway.

Tony smirks at him and says, “Okay, you may stay, but don’t touch the food.”

Darcy shoots Clint a grin and fills a plate for him. She slides it down the table and ignores Tony’s huff.

Natasha shakes her head and leaves, muttering something about men being filthy under her breath.

“Did the mission not go well?” Thor has a serious look on his face. “You look quite vexed, my friend.”

“Eh, it went fine. It was just a shitty mission. I hate jungles.” 

They eat and talk and laugh and once she’s finished, Clint drags her off, much to the odd looks of everyone but Jane and Tony. And Steve, who fails to hide a smirk. She has a fleeting thought as to what exactly he knows and how, but it’s soon lost to more pressing matters.

“Hi,” Clint says, crowding her space, once they’ve made it inside the elevator.

“Oh no. You’re disgusting.” 

He smiles a little and steps back. “I really am. I’m fucking exhausted, too.”

“Come on.” Darcy walks with him to his apartment and finds her way around his kitchen while he showers. He has a fridge full of protein shakes and beer and cupboards full of air. She pops open a couple of beers and takes one to the couch. There is an assortment of magazines on the coffee table, but she doesn’t so much care about archery or guns or men’s fitness, so she flips on the TV. She’s halfway done with her beer when Clint shuffles in. He’s pulled on a pair of pajama pants and socks and he has the other beer in hand.

“Boy, have I got a story for you,” Darcy says, shifting over so he can sit. He stretches out on his back and tugs her against his chest and she smiles, curling into him, feeling warm and unexpectedly happy. She’d missed him, she realizes, and it’s odd but nice at the same time.

“Is it a good story or a bad story?”

“It’s a weird story.” She tells him about Tony’s reaction to her vacuum chamber and being invited on his walk through R&D. She tells him about her weekend and about finally going to see Bruce.

He tells her bits and pieces about his mission, which reminds him of another story and another after that. He has this way of storytelling that’s mostly hilarious and a little sincere and she finds it fascinating and charming. It’s after midnight when she finally insists on going home.

“I have to work tomorrow,” She says, ignoring the way his fingers are lingering on her hip.

“I have it on good authority that you’ll be filing really boring paperwork on a recon mission in Bolivia.”

She scoffs. _”That_ was boring?”

“Completely.”

“Well, _I_ have it on good authority that _someone_ will do a piss-poor job of getting his mission report in on time, so at least part of my day will be listening to my boss complain about that.”

“What a jerk.” Clint dips his head down and kisses her, slow and dirty. And she would just give in and let him strip her naked right then and there, but he breaks away to yawn.

“Go to sleep,” She says, extracting herself from him and the couch. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He looks put-out, but by the time she’s crossed the room, he’s snoring.

***

Clint had been a very good distraction from her nerves directly relating to the impending meander (because there is no way Tony sticks to any kind of planned route) through Stark Industries R&D. She isn’t really clear on why she is being brought along except that he’d been impressed with her handiwork, which, yeah, okay, it was a pretty great piece of upcycling and making it actually work was mostly luck and more luck, but why he wanted her to come along was a complete mystery.

And crap-snacks. She didn’t tell Coulson she had to take the afternoon off to go play Bob the Builder. 

It’s only quarter after eight and Coulson’s already looking like he’s been there hours past quitting time. He looks up at her as she pokes her head through his doorway and she feels guilty abandoning him, but Tony will just press the issue and get his way if she tries to flake.

“So... Uh. I’m sort of supposed to go do a walk through of R&D with Tony this afternoon.”

Coulson says nothing; just looks at her blankly.

“I’m not really sure why, but I figured it was easier to go along with it than try and tell him no.”

He nods and makes a face like that’s an annoying but totally accurate assessment and Darcy pats herself on the back for reading Coulson’s faces so well.

She turns back to her desk, but before she goes, Coulsons says, “If he offers you a job, take it.”

Confused, Darcy looks back at him and considers sniffing his coffee cup for booze. Or maybe this isn’t really Coulson and someone’s replaced him with a robot.

“You’re not an evil robot Coulson are you?”

He doesn’t dignify that with an answer and they both know it’s not because it’s a ridiculous question, it’s because evil robot Coulson would never admit to being an evil robot. Instead, he says, “Your talents are wasted here. And you can’t keep fraternizing with your coworkers, it’s against regulations.”

Darcy poorly hides a surprised cough and puts on her best poker face, which is terrible, but whatever. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.” She beats a hasty retreat and spends the rest of the morning filing and scheduling and transcribing and filing. The job requires a lot of filing.

Clint shows up with his mission report at eleven and brings lunch. Coulson glares at him through the open door and Clint gives him a jaunty little wave as they leave, bound for the park.

“He can’t be too mad,” Clint says, unwrapping a sandwich. “That’s the fastest I’ve ever turned in paperwork. Did I beat Nat? Tell me I beat Nat.”

“She e-mailed it last night.”

“Damn it.”

“Speaking of Nat,” Darcy says, because obviously Darcy has no sense of timing or place whatsoever. “We should maybe talk about that. The whole Natasha of it all.”

He shrugs, his mouth stuffed with sandwich. “I guess,” he says around the food.

“It’s just... I know you two used to...” Darcy doesn’t have a flipping clue how to finish that sentence. She’s not sure Clint knows how to finish that sentence.

“It was - is - complicated. You really want to talk about this now? Don’t you have a father-daughter date in like fifteen minutes?”

She nearly chokes on the pretzels she’s eating and does her best to glare at him, but he’s barely holding back a laugh and it’s sort of stupidly adorable. She tells him she hates him and his grin widens.

“We’ll talk about it, but you go be all the mad scientist you can be, first.” He bundles up all their garbage and throws it in the trash (with an annoying little wink and without looking at the bin that’s twenty feet away), before dragging her to her feet. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

The terrible truth is that it is fun. Tony meets her at her desk at twenty after, which is way earlier than she actually expected him to show up, and they follow some guy in a way too expensive suit to one of the many floors dedicated to making things that shouldn’t exist, exist. 

There are prototypes for everything she imagined and some she didn’t. The military tactical gear and vehicle plans, she expected. The designs and early versions of research equipment she also expected (Jane would salivate over the binocular telescope plan), but the biomechanical lungs? The regenerative spine research? She had expected none of that. 

Darcy’s staring at the mock-up of some kind of hovercraft when Tony walks up behind her. There’s something wrong with it, something is off about the rotor size to body weight ratio. She can feel Tony standing there, but oddly he doesn’t say anything, just lets her stare at it. Behind the plastic model, there are a ton of notes all over the high-tech, digital version of a whiteboard. And then she sees it. Plain as day, there’s the problem.

“The blades are too small. It’ll never get off the ground,” she says.

The man who apparently designed the thing - a tall, portly guy with a mustache like Snidely Whiplash - snorts and looks at her like she’s an idiot. “Max takeoff weight is seven thousand pounds.”

“Yeah, but the weight of the body is...” she searches his notes and finds the number she’s looking for, picks up the stylus and starts correcting his equation. “Six thousand, five hundred and it’s got seating for... six. So, unless it’s a very roomy drone, you’ll have to staff it with some very tiny people. Or one Thor.”

Snidely looks at the notes, then at her, and glowers. Tony’s right there, so he keeps his mouth shut, but his face is a really unflattering shade of red.

“I didn’t know you knew anything about aircraft mechanics, Lewis.” Tony’s grinning at her.

“I don’t. That’s just common sense.” It’s the truth; she doesn’t know anything about making things fly, but there are just certain things that her brain fits together. She can’t explain it.

“Some people forget the human factor,” the man in the suit says, whose name she doesn’t know because Tony never introduced them, probably because _Tony_ doesn’t know his name.

“Was that directed at me? I think that was directed at me,” Tony says, smiling.

They’re on their way out, having suitably terrorized (all Tony, thank you very much) the poor people trying to make science happen, when he tells the suit to scram and ushers Darcy into the elevator for the residential and Tony-centric floors.

They stare awkwardly at each other for a moment until the doors slide shut.

“Political Science? Why the hell did you major in Political Science? And then go to grad school?”

“Parental pressure.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Well, your parents are idiots. I know the feeling.”

Darcy doesn’t reply and she hopes someday that this will be hilarious, but right now it’s mostly just sad and uncomfortable.

“Clearly, you’re not an idiot, unless you’re an idiot savant, which, you know, you’re sharing bodily fluids with Barton, so....”

“Tony,” Darcy warns.

“I’m doing all of the development for the team and it’s, ugh, _exhausting_. Plus, they’re all pains in my ass. And not in that good, satisfied after way. I need another person. You can have part of my lab until we can get you one. How are your welding skills? When was your last tetanus shot?”

“I haven’t said yes.”

“You’ll make more money, of course,” Tony carries on, as though she hasn’t spoken. “And accidental explosions are encouraged, just ask Bruce, but don’t get any ideas about entertaining guests. No unsanctioned sex in the lab.”

“Unsanctioned?”

“I.e. Pepper and Tony sex only.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

“Do you _have_ to give two weeks notice? Is it treason if you don’t?”

“I don’t think I’m qualified for this job.”

“JARVIS, send the paperwork to Darcy’s email and notify - oh, wait - do you want to tell Coulson or should I?”

She stares at him for a minute and sighs. “I think I had better give my own resignation notice.”

“Suit yourself. Give the paperwork to Pepper and we’re having celebratory drinks at six.”

***

“I don’t actually know how it happened,” she tells Clint after work that night. “I’m pretty sure I never said yes.”

“But you wanted to.”

She sighs, letting him drag her to the couch with him. “Yeah, I did.”

Coulson had accepted her resignation with a nod and a small smile. They had agreed that once she finds a replacement and said replacement is done with SHIELD academy training (assuming she isn’t pulling from the already trained-up employee pool), she is free to go play mad scientist. 

True to form, JARVIS had sent all of the new hire paperwork to her email and she nearly had a heart attack when she saw her new salary. Then again, she assumed most of that was hazard pay for working in close proximity to Tony.

She filled it out and sent it off to Pepper before she could change her mind.

“Do we have to go to celebratory drinks?” Clint asks, pressing his nose against her neck and kissing her pulse point.

“Yes. It would be very bad form to not show up to my own party.”

“You could say you were doing research. Very important Hawkeye related research,” he says, sliding a palm up the back of her shirt and fingering the clasp on her bra.

“Oh no, mister.” Darcy pulls away and stands up, smoothing down her top. “This is not naked time. There is not nearly enough time to be naked right now.”

He makes a grab for her, but she dodges and he lets her. “You may have a point.”

“Besides,” Darcy says, still without a sense of timing. “We haven’t addressed the Natasha shaped elephant. The Natashaphant, if you will.”

He makes a face that might be dismissive, but his eyes narrow a little and she’s not sure what else that expression means. “It’s really not that big of a deal,” he says, standing and tugging on a jacket.

“We’re only going two floors up,” Darcy says, eyeballing his jacket.

“Yes, but you’re insisting on having the Natasha conversation so we’re going to dinner after because that conversation is best held in public.”

Refusing to take the bait, Darcy gives him a condescending look. “It’s adorable that you think we’ll get out of there in time for any kind of dinner.”

***

Celebratory drinks turns into celebratory appetizers, which turns into celebratory dinner, which turns into celebratory dessert wine and cheese, because Pepper is Pepper and she was not on-board with the chili dogs Tony insisted they eat.

Darcy barely manages to extract Clint from the pull of a fully inebriated Tony and the promise of morally ambiguous adventures, possibly in places outside the continental US. Tony’s in a good mood.

Not that Darcy is against inebriation and morally questionable activities, it’s just that she’s got too many things to do. Her boyfriend being one of them. And how stupid is the word boyfriend? She’s going to boycott that word on the grounds that it makes her feel fifteen years old. Besides, she’s not really sure if that word applies. It’s all sort of weird and confusing.

Anyway, Clint’s been nearby all night, but he’s not the barnacle type and doesn’t cling, which is good, but Darcy is no saint and it’s been a while since she’s had sex and Clint is ridiculously built and and and. There are a lot of reasons she would like to get that man naked as soon as possible.

She’s working out a plan of action, considering whether to just go pull him away from whatever conversation he’s having with Thor (with bonus Asgardian hand gestures) or just wait it out, when Natasha sneaks up behind her and Darcy nearly leaps out of her skin.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” 

Natasha’s lip quirks and she says, “But it’s funny. You twitch.”

“I do not twitch.”

“You do.”

Instead of trying to argue, Darcy just sighs. There’s no point. Plus, she’s been drinking something she’s pretty sure is made of magic and rainbows and her head is a very happy, warm place.

“Why are you brooding? Did Clint screw up already?” Natasha gives her something that might be an affectionate look. If affection can be terrifying.

“I’m not brooding.” When Natasha just looks at her like she’s full of shit, Darcy relents. “Okay, fine. I’m... overthinking.”

“About Clint?”

Darcy gets the impression that Natasha doesn’t ask questions she doesn’t already know the answer to and it’s unnerving. She decides to test the theory. “About you,” she says, meeting Natasha’s eyes for a brief moment and then turning back to the room at large.

“Ah.” Natasha doesn’t sound surprised, not that she ever would. “I told you not to feel weird on my account.”

Darcy scoffs because she’s maybe a little tipsy and the part of her brain that would normally warn against scoffing at the Black Widow is turned off. “I just want to understand it. Just so I don’t have to misinterpret every little thing, because I will and then I will be awkward and insecure. I’ve met me.”

Natasha gives her a long look and smiles. Well, she does this little lip twist thing that is probably a smile. “Clint and I are complicated, obviously, but we did the partners who have sex thing and the best friends who have sex thing and the being in love thing and there was always one common denominator. We were miserable.” She pauses and considers something for a minute. “Okay, there were two common denominators - misery and yelling. So much yelling. There are too many ugly things between us and we are just too similar. We’re too explosive and we know each other too well. Throw emotions in the mix and it’s one big disaster.”

As explanations go, it’s a pretty good one. Plus, Natasha’s been spearheading the Clint’s clueless campaign from pretty much the get-go and Darcy finds herself believing all of it.

“Okay,” Darcy says, nodding.

Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

Natasha shrugs. “That was easy.”

“Well, I can choose to believe you or I can choose not to believe you, but the choosing not to option means I won’t enjoy myself as much, so...”

“Right,” Natasha says, sounding like she thinks there’s something very funky about Darcy’s logic.

In the end, she just slides up to his side, slips her hand in his, winks at Thor (who smiles brightly back) and tugs him out of the room. 

“Excuse me,” Clint says haughtily, pulling her to a stop in the hallway. “I was having a conversation.” 

Darcy pats his arm and looks solemnly at him. “Sorry. I figured you’d rather this than that.” She stands up on her toes and presses her mouth to his, tugging his bottom lip between her teeth. “But if Thor’s...”

She doesn’t finish because Clint leans in and kisses her again, warm hands framing her face and then sliding into her hair and then down her back. They tumble through his door for no reason other than it’s closer and her shirt ends up on the floor, along with his jacket and her shoes and by the time they reach his bed (which is enormous and fluffy and minus the satin sheets she had kind of expected to make fun of), they’re down to their skivvies. And then those are gone too, thank god.

She watches him a moment, appreciates the play of muscles across his stomach and shoulders as he slides up next to her, his hands skimming across her skin. She was sure he’d be beautiful naked, but her imagination had nothing on the reality. He’s hard and smooth and her fingertips drag across scars and ridges and it’s obscenely hot.

He kisses a trail across her shoulders and over her breasts and Darcy’s skin tingles everywhere he touches. A calloused finger draws a rough line across her nipple and she can’t help the way her breath hitches and her muscles tighten. He sucks the other into his mouth and she is unashamed of the way she arches off the mattress.

She slides a hand down between them, grips his very hard erection and laughs when he grunts what might be a curse but also might be a plea. And then she loses all reasonable thought, because he’s crawled backward down her body and his tongue is on her clit and _fuck_.

***

Later, she wakes up to the feel of him untangling himself from her and the sounds of a whispered conversation. She peeks an eye open and watches as he drags on some underwear and riffles around in his closet for some work clothes, his phone tucked between his ear and shoulder.

“I didn’t hear the alarm,” she says, rubbing her eyes, trying to come awake.

“Wasn’t one. Not a team thing. Go back to sleep.”

“‘Kay.” And she’s back asleep before he’s even dressed.

When she wakes up for work, there’s a note on the bedside table. He’ll be back tomorrow and Darcy wonders if this how her life with Clint will go - disappearances in the dead of night, best friend ex-girlfriends, constant peril - and she can’t seem to be bothered by that. Maybe she should be, maybe it’s not healthy to be surrounded by people who are flinging themselves into danger, maybe she should be concerned about his attachment to Natasha, maybe she’s just lining up to be another one on the string (Rope? Chain?) of one night stands and failed relationships (And one bonus marriage!), but it just isn’t bothering her.

She decides that what doesn’t bother her, can’t hurt her.


	7. Chapter 6

When Darcy sets out to find someone to take her place as Coulson’s Girl Friday, she does so with the same level of aggression as a school of piranhas. She’s ruthless and cuts perfectly good candidates on little more than gut instinct. After three days of fruitless interviews, she’s got a pile of resumes spread across her coffee table next to two empty bottles of wine. 

Natasha and Pepper are seated nearby, each with a resume in one hand and a wine glass in the other.

“Ugh,” Nat says, tossing a stapled packet of papers to the floor. “Robert Hillman is a dick and you may not hire him.” She grabs another from the unread pile.

Darcy draws a line through the name Hillman on her list. “This sucks.”

“I like this one,” Pepper adds. “Marla Darius. She’s retiring from field work. Ten years with S.H.I.E.L.D. Seems very interested in staying with them in some capacity.”

“I know her,” Nat says. “She was a good agent. Got hurt a few years ago and has been relegated to weapons training and she hates it. She’d be good.”

Darcy highlights Darius in pink on her list and and then goes over it with a yellow highlighter. Natasha raises an eyebrow at her. “What? Pink is for when you approve and yellow is for when Pepper approves. You have different skill sets, your opinions mean different things.”

“Do me a favor,” Natasha says, smiling. “Start highlighting Clint’s briefing sheets so he knows what the hell is going on before we show up to an assignment.”

“He knows what the hell is going on,” Clint says, letting himself in and kicking the door shut. “He just likes watching your eye twitch when you get annoyed.”

With Clint’s help, they narrow it down to three people and by the end of the week, Coulson’s agreed to offer the job to Marla, who accepts happily and agrees to start on Monday.

It also just so happens that that is the day Bruce sends her a text asking to meet at the coffee shop, which can only mean one thing. 

She calls Clint from the roof, because there are ears other than JARVIS’ and even when speaking in code, she doesn’t need some rumor starting about whatever people think they hear.

“Hey,” he says, sounding winded. 

“Hi. Are you busy?”

“Nah, just kicking Cap’s ass.”

Darcy laughs and she can hear Steve snort in the background and Thor make some kind of exclamation about mighty egos. 

“What’s up?” Clint asks, as the background noise fades to a dull murmur and then an echo. 

“Are you taking me into the bathroom with you, Barton?”

“Yep.”

“Sexy,” she says, voice flat.

“Okay, Jenny Raincloud, what’s the matter?”

Darcy sighs and leans against the wall by the door, takes in the view of the city. “The good doctor has the information on Operation Bangkok.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

“No, it’s okay.” Darcy isn’t sure why, but she wants to do this on her own. She tells him so and he sounds reluctant to let her, but doesn’t actually argue.

“Come by after?” He asks.

“Are you planning on following me?”

There is a long pause on the other end of the line and then he says, “No.”

“Are you planning on having Nat follow me?”

There is a second pause. “No.”

“For a spy, you’re a terrible liar.”

Clint snorts. “Tasha’s the spy. I’m just the guy who shoots things.”

Darcy assures him one last time that she’ll go to his place after her meeting with Bruce and hangs up, feeling too many feelings.

***

The DNA test comes back as no surprise at all and Darcy finds herself overcome with complete calm. She stares at the paper, looking only briefly at Bruce, because he looks so very concerned and she hates that expression on him.

“I’m okay,” she assures him, stuffing the papers back into the envelope and sipping her coffee. “Really. Oddly, I feel almost lighter.”

Bruce nods and stares at his fingers for a minute. “I imagine it’s a relief.”

“Yeah. It’s the not knowing that drives you crazy. And I’m really not surprised.”

“What are you going to do?”

She knows the answer to that, has thought long and hard about it, so when she replies it is without hesitation. “Nothing. I needed to know for me, just so I could stop wondering. I’m not telling him.”

Bruce looks down and away and he purses his lips a little. His hands are in a knot in his lap and he’s clearly warring with himself.

“Out with it, Bruce. Whatever it is, you can say it. This is a safe zone.”

“He would want to know.”

Darcy looks at him long and hard. He’s resolutely looking right back and she can feel her expression soften because he’s so damn sincere. He really just wants the best for all of them, but she firmly believes that dropping this news on Tony is not best for anyone.

“He likes you. He’s very, very fond of you and that’s a rarity for Tony. There are approximately ten people that he genuinely likes in this whole world and eight of them live with him.”

“This doesn’t change that,” Darcy points out. “Besides, we’d have to set up patrols to make sure he doesn’t drink himself to death or blow himself up. He would not react well.”

Bruce makes a face like he concedes that point. “He’s a complicated mess of neuroses and he would probably react very poorly... at first. But Tony’s all heart, despite what he would have people believe. He would want to know.”

“I know,” she says, sadly. “But it’s my choice and I don’t want to go down that road. Too many potholes. Besides, he’s paying my rent and employing me, it’s like he’s being my dad already.”

***

Clint’s doing that thing he does when he’s worried, which is sitting in his living room with a beer and his guitar and Janis Joplin playing on the stereo. Okay, sometimes it’s Patty Griffin or Otis Redding or Hank Williams (Depends on what he’s worrying about.), but today it’s Janis and Darcy wonders exactly when she learned that about him. She thinks it might have been New Mexico, when she would find him on the roof in the middle of the night, the ancient speaker system softly playing and his face doing that blank and serious thing.

Now, she thinks she might be honored he’s added her to the Joplin label.

“Wow,” Darcy says, from the doorway. “Less than a month together and my family drama already rates moody expressions and meaningful music. I must be a big deal.”

He sets the guitar down and grins. “You’re a big something, I’m just not sure _deal_ is the right word.”

“Har har.”

He looks at her a moment and she shrugs. “Just as we expected,” she says, sitting next to him on the couch and leaning in when he wraps an arm around her.

“You okay?” He asks.

“Very okay. I feel... calm.”

They don’t say anything for a long time. They just sit together and listen to the music and Darcy feels content. There are no more puzzles to solve, no more questions eroding her worldview, no more doubt or uncertainty or confusion. Now, there is just the rest of her life and, so far, it’s looking way up.

***

Tony decides that for the first week of her new job, he’s going to take her to school. She shows up on day one to find an old fashioned chalkboard (the kind on the wheeled frame) sitting in the lab. Tony’s doing something across the room and Dummy is following him around with several pieces of chalk clutched in his claw. 

“Hey,” she says to get his attention and Dummy wheels over, offers her the chalk. She pats his arm and says, “I think those are for Tony.”

“Lewis, sit. We have a lot to cover.”

And so it goes. He tosses books and papers and all manner of educational material at her (sometimes literally) and he decides after two days that the chalkboard is great for nostalgia, but is completely annoying in practical use and lets Dummy draw all over it in the corner. He gives her a crash course in avionics, thermodynamics, weaponry, robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and, for some odd reason, the history of comic books. Much of it is review or expansion on what she already knows, but Darcy learned mostly by herself and so much of what he’s throwing at her is brand new. But she keeps up, somehow, miraculously, and he rewards her successes with projects and booze.

“Wait,” she says at one point a few weeks into her makeshift education. “I did well and now I have to design new communicators? How is this a reward?”

“Heads up,” he says, tossing her a screwdriver. “How is that not a reward?”

They spend all day, every day, holed up in the lab for over a month and each night Darcy wanders home, tired and happy. More often than not, Clint’s there and they watch a movie or play a video game or just hang out. They almost always have mind boggling sex, and as the end of September approaches, Darcy is running on fumes.

She shows up the last day of September, with her hair half brushed and her clothes a mess. Tony takes one look at her and smirks.

“What’s the matter, Darcy? Up late? Did you get lucky last night?”

The weirdest thing is that this isn’t weird at all. She doesn’t have any kind of uncomfortable feelings about talking to Tony about sex or drugs or alcohol or other taboo topics. In fact, they talk about sex kind of a lot. Granted, she doesn’t go into detail, but that’s more about Clint having to work with Tony than it is about him being her father.

“Damn right I did,” she says. “Birthday sex.”

He looks surprised and then immediately pleased. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you tell me? Perfect day for a field trip!”

He takes her flying. They take some tiny biplane that he’s got holed up in a hangar at a little strip of an airport upstate. He proves to be an unexpectedly patient teacher and ten minutes into the flight, Darcy’s the one with the throttle. It’s amazing and exhilarating and she can hardly believe that this is her life; that Thor fell out of the sky and now she’s living in a tower with superheroes and having maybe a grown-up-with-feelings relationship with one of them and Tony Stark is giving her flying lessons. It’s so surreal that she discretely pinches herself because holy shit this has to be a dream.

They fly for an hour before calling it a day and when they land, she’s so hopped up on adrenaline and joy that she tackles Tony in a bear hug.

“Best birthday ever,” she mumbles into his jacket and he laughs before peeling her off and telling her she’s ruining his reputation. And his jacket.

She gets home later to find Clint in her kitchen wearing nothing but an apron, frosting a severely lopsided cake. “Best birthday ever,” she repeats, sliding her arms around his waist and tugging the apron’s ties loose.


	8. Chapter 7

The trouble with getting everything that you want (even if it’s in wildly unexpected packages), is that it can’t possibly last.

Fall had started with fireworks and happiness and really awesome things, but as they slide toward the end of the year, the universe rears her ugly head and bites Darcy square on the ass.

Thanksgiving gets the drop on all of them (Why do people go insane during the holidays?) and so when Steve sends a mass text the day before Turkey Day, they’re all left scrambling to throw together a meal. Pepper saves the day with ingenuity and Tony’s credit card, and while they do manage to get all of the parts of the meal, they still have to assemble said meal together. Unfortunately, no amount of ingenuity and credit cards can fix the crazy that plagues them. 

This time, it’s a woman on a broomstick (yes, a broomstick) flying around Central Park, dropping fire bombs on the Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s a little below their payscale, really, but Spiderman has apparently decided to go on vacation or something because no one can find him and Tony flat out refuses to go stop her in the middle of making dinner unless they all go. Apparently, he’s twelve.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Meals and meetings and all manner of things are interrupted by bad guys all the time, but this particular time also marks Darcy and Clint’s first sort-of-fight and the first time she realizes she might maybe have starts-with-L-and-ends-with-ove type feelings. A little. Maybe.

It all happens because Clinton Francis Barton is an asshat and a damn knight in shining-ish (okay, maybe slightly tainted) armor. The team gets things under control quickly and the Wicked Witch of the West is turned over to Fury and all is well, except Hawkeye notices a problem at the last minute, a very big bomb shaped problem. Later, when Darcy works up the courage to watch the news footage, she’ll regret not getting madder at him than she initially did.

She finds him in MedBay on the helicarrier, his left arm bandaged with so much clean white fabric and his head wrapped in kind. There are thick bands of tape around his rib cage and lacerations all along his chest and shoulders. He smiles when she walks in.

“You asshole,” Darcy says, paying no attention to Natasha and Bruce, who make a quick exit, the former smirking all the way. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Clint’s face goes hard. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“What were you thinking?! You can’t just jump on bombs!”

“I didn’t jump on a bomb. I disposed of a bomb.”

Darcy huffs. “By jumping on it!”

He glares at her and she can tell he’s just itching with the desire to walk out of the room. “This is what I do, Darcy. You know that. There’s no use yelling at me about it.”

“I’m not yelling,” she yells. “I’m reacting to your stupidity and it requires raised voices!”

“Did you just come here to bust my balls about this? Because if so, you can leave now. Consider my balls busted.”

Darcy stares at him for a moment, angry, scared, frustrated, feeling too many emotions at once, and deflates. It is his job, she knows that, but more importantly, it’s just who he is. He wasn’t always that guy who throws himself between people and danger, but he is now and she actually appreciates that about him. 

She crosses her arms and glares. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry,” Clint says and makes a cuter-than-it-should-be face. He pats the bed and shuffles awkwardly over to make room.

“Nope,” Darcy says, drawing her arms even tighter around herself. “I’m still mad.”

“You know, your tits look amazing when you cross your arms like that.”

“Shut up.” But her anger is dissolving and she nearly smiles.

“Come on.” He pats the bed again.

Darcy huffs and crosses the room and before she knows it, she’s curled in against him, her head on his shoulder and an arm gently around his waist. 

“Sorry,” he says into her hair and she does her best not to cry on him.

“Yeah, me too. I’m not trying to be a harpy, I just apparently don’t have a lid on this whole calm under pressure business.”

“It’s okay. But next time, can you yell at me after I get out of the hospital?”

“No way. This is prime yelling time. You can’t get up and leave and you can’t really fight back.”

He grumbles and huffs half-heartedly and whatever remark he’s about to make is cut off by the appearance of a woman in scrubs and a scowl to beat her mother’s. Darcy’s shuffled off so they can force sleep on Clint and she stands in the doorway longer than is strictly comfortable because there’s a weird twisting in her gut and a clenching in her chest and she’s pretty sure she wants to say something she can never take back. Instead, she goes home and grabs Jane and they spend the majority of the night in the lab.

***

Clint heals up pretty quickly and Darcy’s insanely glad, because she is not a nurturer. At all. She probably should feel bad that she’s always escaping to work, but it’s better this way. 

She and Tony keep up the flying lessons. He says that she needs the practical knowledge to really understand what it is she will be fixing and designing. When they’re not flying, they’re building bombs and rockets and guns and generally causing a ruckus. It’s the very most fun ever.

“You’re getting almost competent,” Tony says, as she hops down from the cockpit.

“Oh, stop it. You’ll make me blush.” And the truth is, she knows he means that she’s doing well, knows that it’s a compliment of the highest caliber. She’s fluent in Tony these days.

She landed a little hard, but it’s only the fourth time she’s gotten to fly solo, so she’s pretty proud of herself. They secure the plane and lock the hangar and she finds herself very grateful to Happy for keeping the car warm. December upstate is brutal.

“Are you and Katniss coming to the party tonight?” Tony asks, plopping down next to her. “Happy’s bringing his new girl, isn’t that right, Hogan?”

“No,” Happy says.

“He is.”

Darcy grins. “Yep. I even bought a new dress. Well, you bought me a new dress, actually. Note to self, always go shopping with Pepper.”

“Leave the tags on and take it back tomorrow.” Tony digs a bottle of champagne out from the limo’s icebox. He pours and hands her a glass. “Congratulations.”

“On letting Pepper buy me a dress?”

“On completing the requirements for your pilot’s license, despite your terrible abilities.”

Darcy grins and fakes surprised, like she hadn’t been sweating nervously all day. “Oh, was that today?” 

“You almost failed, you know.”

“I did not.”

They clink their glasses together and Darcy decides that this might be the first Christmas to trump that year her grandpa bought her a puppy.

***

In holding with Stark tradition, the Christmas Party is overdone, over-loud, over-long and just generally over the top. Fury’s not there, of course, but Hill is pretending to enjoy herself and Coulson’s actually enjoying himself, so that should count for something. Darcy wanders from group to group all night, enjoying the wine and the food and every so often circling back around to Clint for a dance or to butt in on whatever conversation he happens to be having. 

Thor keeps grinning at her and Darcy spends much of the night wary of what exactly he got her for Christmas. She knows that grin, it’s the grin of someone who knows something and they just can’t wait to tell. When asked about it, Jane shrugs and says she doesn’t know. 

“Okay, big man,” Darcy says, cornering Thor by the dessert table. “What’s with all the I-know-a-secret smiles?”

“I know a secret.”

She narrows her eyes at him and waits.

“And I am not telling you what that secret is.”

“Is it going to explode? Because you have to warn me if it’s going to explode.”

Thor’s laugh is loud and full of mirth. “It will not explode, Darcy.”

“I still don’t believe him,” she says to Clint, who has appeared behind her, as Thor wanders off.

“If anyone was going to get you something that would explode, it wouldn’t be Thor.” They both look straight at Tony, as if expecting him to produce said exploding gift. He doesn’t totally disappoint. He appears to be building some kind of projectile out of toothpicks and cocktail cherries. Natasha is helping and there are four or five other people gathered around them. Cap is nearby with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed.

“Steve’s got Cap face on,” Darcy comments.

Clint laughs. “That’s our Cap, always there to disapprove of our fun.”

“I think he secretly likes it.”

“You know what I like?” Clint’s hand slides up her back, skating over the exposed skin across her shoulders. He presses a kiss to her ear. “This dress.”

“You can’t borrow it. I have to return it tomorrow,” Darcy teases, leaning into his touch.

“Excuse me,” Tony shouts. “Robin Hood and Maid Marian, there are PDA rules in this tower.”

Clint flips him off and is immediately subjected to the trial run of the toothpick... trebuchet? Catapult? Slingshot? Whatever. They take that as their cue to leave.

They make it to the elevator before Clint slides his hands over her ass and kisses her.

He tastes like champagne and strawberries. He’s got her pressed against the wall and there’s a very real danger of him ripping her dress, which, while completely awesome, would also result in premature nakedness and thus be very bad. The kisses are sloppy and he has a hand tangled in her hair. The other hand is dragging the hem of her dress up her thigh, the rough edges of the sequins scratching her skin.

“Fuck,” she says against his mouth and he hums in reply.

She slides a hand down his chest to his hips, squeezing the inside of his thigh, flattening her palm against his erection. It’s his turn to curse and when the elevator doors open, they stumble to her door, and while she’s fiddling with the key, he just says, “JARVIS, open the door, please,” against her mouth.

They fall together onto the couch and he pulls her into his lap, jutting his hips upward against her and she presses back down in response. She hisses against his neck, sucking at his pulsepoint. 

“I’ve gotta know, Barton,” Darcy mutters, dragging her teeth over his shoulder. “How the hell did you get so good at this when you are such crap with women?”

He pulls back to look at her and there’s a smart-ass grin tugging at his mouth. “I’m not crap with women. I’m just crap with women I actually like. This...” He drags his hand up her thigh and makes her shiver. “This I can do.”

Not bothering with the bottom few buttons, Darcy pulls his shirt over his head. “Ooh, you like me?”

“The general consensus is that I do.” He draws the zipper at the back of her dress down and she’s more than happy to shimmy out of it.

“I’m glad. I’m very glad.” She stands to let the sparkling fabric fall in a puddle at her feet and bends to slip off her shoes, but he catches her wrists and pulls her back down to straddle his thighs.

“Leave the shoes,” he says, kissing her mouth and then her jaw and then just above her bra line. His fingers trail over her hips and dip inside her panties and he smiles. “I like these,” he says, fingers wandering over the black and purple lace.

“I thought you might,” Darcy says, running her nails along his scalp. He does something amazing with his finger and her breath hitches. “Bed. Now.”

“Unh uh,” Clint mutters against her skin. He sucks at a nipple through the sheer fabric of her bra. “Right here. Couch. With those shoes on.”

“Ugh, but the condoms are in the bedroom.” She flips open the buttons on his pants and wraps her hands around him, grinning when his eyes fall shut and his hips jerk.

“We should start keeping some hidden around the apartment. In all of the rooms. Stuffed into the couch cushions would be a really good place,” he says, kissing her hard and impatient.

With a sigh, she pulls away and stands up. He gives her a goofy grin, as she spins around toward the bedroom.

The bedroom light flips on when she enters and she nearly trips in those ridiculous shoes while her eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. She grabs a handful of condoms and curses her lack of balance as she makes her way back to the couch.

But she never makes it to the couch, because when she returns to the living room, there’s someone there who was not there before.

“Oh my god! Mom, what are you doing here?”

Vanessa Lewis looks like she might actually breathe fire. “What am I doing here? What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Because Darcy has never been very good at _not_ being a smart ass, she says, “Well, I was going to have some sex, but now...”

Clint does a piss-poor job hiding a laugh.

“Darcy.” Her mother is glaring at her with such anger that Darcy is suddenly feeling eight years old.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.

Clint crosses the room and grabs the throw off the back of the couch. He drapes it around her shoulders and takes up a spot to her left, his arms crossed against his chest. 

Her mother, however, seems to be unconcerned with him, keeping her attention on Darcy. She’s got this horrible look on her face, somewhere between livid and terrified and Darcy doesn’t know what to do with that. 

“I know I lied and it looks bad... well, all of this looks bad, but I will explain it.” Darcy kicks off the heels and looks at her half dressed boyfriend and the handful of condoms she’s clutching and snorts. “Okay, maybe not all of it.”

“I come all the way to New York as a surprise for Christmas and what do I find?” Vanessa asks, clearly not actually hearing Darcy. “I find out that you do not now nor have you ever worked for Senator whatever-his-name-is and you’re _living in Tony Stark’s tower!_ ” The last part is said in such a fearful whisper that Darcy actually flinches.

“Okay, Mom,” Darcy says, starting to panic because she has no idea what to do other than get her out of JARVIS’ hearing range. “We can’t do this here. Let me grab some clothes and...” she trails off, grabbing Clint’s shirt from the floor, frantically pulling it on.

“Darcy,” her mom says, barely above a whisper and almost angry. “Does he know?”

“Lets go talk about this not here.” She’s buttoning the shirt as fast as she can and Clint’s grabbed a pair of jeans from the bedroom for her and she abandons the buttons to tug those on. “There are too many ears here. Please, just not here.”

Vanessa glances at Clint and looks completely bewildered. “Not him... whoever he is...”

“Clint.” Clint says.

“Nice to meet you,” Vanessa says reflexively and then turns her attention back to Darcy.

“Does Stark know?”

“Mom, stop! Just give me a minute.”

“I tried so hard, Darcy. To keep you from all of this, from the materialism and the ego and the complete lack of morals.” Her mother has apparently decided to just fall all apart and Darcy abandons the zipper on her pants to make a dash for the door.

“Come on, Mom. Lets go anywhere but here and discuss my loose morals.”

And then the oddest thing happens. Vanessa Lewis flips some kind of internal mood switch and her inner Hulk peeks out. “Please tell me you didn’t come to New York and tell Stark that he’s your father. Please tell me that’s not what happened,” she says and looks venomous.

The entire room falls silent and she can tell Clint is barely restraining the urge to shut her mother up by force. Darcy, though, just feels defeated.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis?”

“Any chance I can convince you to delete any record of this?”

There is a long pause and she can almost feel JARVIS searching for a loophole they both know isn’t there. Finally, he makes a sound like a sigh and says, “I’m sorry, Miss Lewis, but my protocols are restricted and only Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts have clearance for such a command.”

“What the hell?” Vanessa says, startled.

Something occurs to her and she says, “If he doesn’t ask, you don’t have to tell him, right?” A small blossom of hope starts to bloom in her chest.

“I’m afraid...” JARVIS pauses a moment, as though he’s searching for the right phrasing. “That is counter to my programming. I am obligated to advise him.”

“Who the hell is that?” Vanessa asks, more uncomfortable than anything now.

“Okay, okay,” Darcy sucks in a heavy breath. “Can you at least let me tell him myself? Can you at least buy me some time?”

“I can reasonably delay until tomorrow. After that, I’m not certain I can keep from alerting him. It is not a predicament I have yet had occasion to test the parameters of.”

Clint slides his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin. She’s not going to cry. She is not going to cry. Really, she’s not.

“What the hell is going on here?” Vanessa asks.

Darcy pulls away and turns to face her mother. “That’s JARVIS. He runs... well, everything, and since Tony’s his daddy, too -”

“I beg your pardon,” JARVIS says, affronted.

“He has to tell him that I’m the unwitting fruit of his loins, which he did not know. So, you know, thanks for that, Mom.”

Vanessa looks suddenly horrified and confused. “Oh my god. Oh my god! I am so sorry! I thought that...”

But Darcy’s mad now. She knows her mom is scared and angry and hurt - mostly scared and hurt - she gets it, but the woman doesn’t listen, she never listens and now it’s upended Darcy’s entire life. Again.

“I can’t right now, Mom. I will just say something I’ll regret, so can you sit your ass down and stuff a sock in it?” She pauses and takes in her mother’s surprised expression. “See? Words and regret.”

“Ms. Lewis,” Clint says, because he’s unfazed by anything at all, which Darcy is pretty sure is more about working with Natasha than the honest to god gods (And aliens!) he deals with on the regular. “Why don’t you sit and we will be right back.”

Absently, she lets Clint pull her into the bedroom. He shuts the door with a soft click and Darcy flops on the bed, face up, arms out, looking like a starfish and feeling like a million pounds of miserable.

Clint sits next to her and looks sympathetic, which is an odd expression on him. He does feelings, has way more feels than you’d expect from an assassin, but he doesn’t do sympathy very well, so she can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up when she looks at him.

“What?” He asks.

“That face. Barton, baby, you’re awesome.”

“Hey! That’s my, ‘Ooh, I feel for you, bro’ face. It took a lot of practice.”

“And I love it.”

He wrinkles his nose at her and rolls his eyes. “What’re we going to do about your mom?”

“Ugh!” She throws her arms over her face. 

“And your dad?”

“Clint!” Darcy says, but her reprimand is only half-hearted. “We could maybe get Natasha to shut her up? Sleep with the fishes? Lose her memory?”

“I would just like to point out that I told you so,” he says, dodging the pillow she throws at him. “I do remember saying you should just tell him before it blows up in your face.”

“You’re so supportive. I see now why you’ve had so many long and healthy relationships.”

He stands and digs one of his old t-shirts that she’s stolen out of the closet, pulls it over his head and then hauls her to her feet. “Come on mini Stark, lets go deal with your family drama.”

“I really love the way you’re enjoying all of this,” Darcy says, as he frog marches her out to the living room. “It’s inspiring.”

He kisses her and smiles. “I do so love other people’s pain.”

Vanessa is perched awkwardly on the edge of the couch. She looks like she’s either going to start crying or has been crying and Darcy feels bad about that. Not bad enough to apologize, because dude, her mother is not the wronged party here. But she still feels a little shitty.

“Okay, Mom, look. I have to go talk to Tony before his AI breaks the _Congratulations It’s A Girl_ news to him, because that would be about nine different kinds of bad. You can stay in the guest room. Clint will stick around here with you - don’t scare him off, I like him. And please, for the sake of all that is good in the world, don’t say things. Any of the things.”

Clint steps into the hall with her and he looks concerned. “You sure you want to do this now?”

“What other choice do I have?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys! I just couldn't resist this cliffhanger.


	9. Chapter 8

She finds Tony sprawled on the sofa, Pepper tucked into his side, remnants of the party littering the tables around them. She looks at them for a moment and really regrets how horribly she’s about to uproot their lives.

“On a scale of one to Amy Winehouse, how drunk are you right now?” She asks.

Tony makes a thoughtful noise. “Amanda Bynes.”

Darcy thinks about that for a minute and then says, “That’ll do. I need to borrow you for a minute.”

He makes a face at her, it’s one of those scoffing-oh-please type expressions that he’s got perfected and says, “What could you have to say to me that Pepper can’t hear?”

She really doesn’t want to do this with Pepper there. She’s not entirely sure why, since he’s just going to tell her anyway, but Darcy’s stomach twists even worse with the idea of confessing in front of both of them.

“Please?”

Pepper, bless her, smiles softly and says, “Of course. It’s past my bedtime anyway.” She kisses Tony quickly and disappears up the stairs to their room.

Tony looks her over, scrutiny written into the lines of his face and folds his arms. The light of the arc reactor is illuminating his face oddly in the dim room and Darcy can’t help but think he looks a little sinister.

“Anyone ever tell you that ironically unironic goatee makes you look like an evil mastermind?”

“Why are you stalling? You had better not be here to tell me you need to turn your spare room into a nursery, because there is a rule about babies in the tower and that rule is no.”

“It is painful just how funny that isn’t. But as segues go, I’ll take it.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Speaking of babies,” Darcy says, holding her breath and ignoring how her hands are shaking and she might pass out. “You don’t know it, but you contributed exactly half your genetic make up to one, once. And it’s me. Surprise!”

The other eyebrow goes up and he looks genuinely surprised.

They stare at each other for a long minute, neither saying or doing anything. Finally, Tony stands and walks over to her, looking her square in the eyes.

“Lewis, what exactly led you to think that?” 

She’s biting her lips and her heart is pounding so fast and so hard she can’t think straight, which is probably why she rattles out: “I had Bruce run a DNA test.”

“You what?” He looks suddenly more like Iron Man than she’s ever seen him look and it is quite literally the first time since she’s known him that he’s actually scary. And that includes all the times she’s seen him in the suit.

Shaking, she digs her heels in and stands her ground. “My mom... I’m sure you won’t remember her, but she met you in Thailand and well, you know how babies are made, and she never said anything about it until everyone thought you were dead and I was always just, um, good at machines and math and stuff and then I got here and I’m rambling.” She takes a breath, not looking at him, feeling miserable. “I got here and I had to know. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a possibility so I swore Bruce to secrecy and he did the test for me. I didn’t want to tell you. I wasn’t going to tell you ever, because, well, I don’t know, but my mom showed up and couldn’t keep her mouth shut and now JARVIS knows, which means it was only a matter of time and if you had to find out, I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

His face softens slightly and he takes a long, thoughtful breath. “JARVIS, get Bruce up here.”

“Oh no, don’t...”

“Darcy.” He’s still got his angry face on and it doesn’t take much to cow her. 

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

He scrubs a hand over his face and looks almost sad. Whatever anger she’d seen there a moment ago is gone and now he looks like a lost little boy. Tears burn very close to the edges of her eyes, but somehow she keeps them in.

Bruce shows up only a minute later. He comes in without really paying attention to who is in the room, talking as he walks, looking at his tablet instead of his companions. “If this is about the Steve and Natasha bet, I told you I’m not playing.” He looks up and stops, glances from Darcy’s drawn face to Tony’s tired one. “Oh.”

“There’s a Steve and Natasha bet?” Darcy asks, clinging to something that isn’t the disaster of her life. “Why did no one tell me? I want in.”

“Bruce,” Tony says, very serious. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

“Something tells me it’s already been shared,” Bruce says, giving Darcy a curious look.

“I need to see it; run the samples myself.”

Bruce nods and says, “I assume you want to do that now?”

Tony just gives him a look that implies Bruce asks way too many stupid questions. He turns to Darcy and weird emotions flicker across his face that she can’t place. He doesn’t say anything, just grabs a bottle of something clear off the table closest to him and disappears into the elevator.

“What happened?” Bruce asks, looking so concerned it makes Darcy teary again.

“My mother happened.”

***

Clint’s in the kitchen making tea for her mother when Darcy comes back. “She’s in the shower,” he explains before she even has to ask where Mommy Dearest has run off to.

He leans against the counter, watches her with that look of his, and says, “How’d it go?”

Darcy hops up on the counter and lets her head hit the cabinet with a thud. “Not terribly? He’s in the lab getting extremely wasted right now, but Bruce is with him so hopefully he won’t blow anything up.”

“And he just believed you?”

“No. I told him Bruce ran the test. Tony’s doing his own, of course, but come on. He doesn’t doubt Bruce. Ever.”

“Plus,” Clint says, stuffing the teabags back into the box and setting aside the steaming mug for her mom. He stands in front of her, in the space between her legs, his palms on her hips. “He’s met you and he’s worked with you. It’s isn’t a very big leap.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted by that.”

“Good, because I don’t know if it was a compliment or not.”

She laughs, dropping her head to rest on his shoulder. “God, I’m tired and not nearly as drunk as I was.”

“Well, I’d offer to get you drunk and take you to bed, but your mom’s in the next room.” He fakes scandalized.

“No, her mother’s in this room,” Vanessa says from the doorway. She’s got a robe on and her hair is wrapped up in a towel and she still looks like she’s systematically exploring the entire spectrum of human emotion, one by one.

“Will you stay here tonight?” Darcy asks Clint, feeling silly for asking, but really hating the idea of him leaving.

“Yeah. I’ll be in the bedroom. If you need anything, call Nat, because I’m going to sleep.”

“Ha ha.” 

Once Clint’s gone, Darcy hops down from the counter and takes up a seat at the small breakfast table. Vanessa sips her tea and looks awkwardly around the apartment. 

“Clint seems nice.”

“Yeah, well, he kills people for a living so...”

Darcy cringes inwardly when her mother looks horrified and follows her statement up with, “He’s a sniper, mom. Grade A, government issue, Ma’am-that’s-classified sharpshooter.” It’s only kind of a lie. 

“I see.”

“You think that’s scary, wait until you meet Natasha.”

“Darcy, stop. I’m sorry. I’m so unbelievably sorry. You don’t have to forgive me, but please don’t act like this.”

“Like what? Like I’m having a hard time adjusting, because I _am_ having a hard time adjusting.”

“Like you don’t have anything to say that isn’t derisive and deflecting.”

“Fine. Lets talk.” Darcy doesn’t particularly want to talk, but she knows they probably should, knows her mother is owed at least an explanation, whether Darcy likes it or not. So she tells her about accidentally finding Thor and takes care to leave out the parts that will get her strung up for treason (She feels confident that Fury’s the type of guy who will still hang a person. He’s old school like that.) and gives her a glossed over explanation of her relationship with Clint. And then she has to explain Tony .

“I didn’t go looking for him. He just came with the superhero package. I wasn’t even supposed to live here, but then Jane moved in with her boyfriend and this apartment was open and I was living in New Jersey, which was not all that bad, but who in their right mind would turn down this place? It’s free! Plus, its only a ten floor commute to work.”

Vanessa listens to the whole story and doesn’t interrupt, which is nice, but she doesn’t look placated and she doesn’t look at all relieved by the admission that Darcy didn’t actually come looking for Tony. If anything, she looks more and more wary, more and more worried, which makes Darcy more and more contrary.

“Speaking of, I should probably tell you that I _did_ have a government job - a really cool, classified one that I can’t even tell you about, but I quit so I could work with Tony. I just got my pilot’s license and Tony’s teaching me about avionics. Next week, I get to test run an upgrade to the engine in one of the Avenger’s all terrain vehicles that I designed.” It’s so childish, it’s so stupid, but she’s so frustrated that she just doesn’t care enough to stop herself. There is just something in the set of her mother’s jaw and the way her eyes are narrowed that draws out all of those years of being put down for what she was good at.

“If that’s what makes you happy,” her mother forces out through clenched teeth.

“It really does. I’m going to bed now. Feel free to stay up and snoop, I know you want to.”

“Goodnight, Darcy,” her mother says, voice tight and face blank.

“You know, I didn’t ask,” Darcy says, turning in the doorway. “How did you get in here? The whole building requires a security clearance.”

“When I couldn’t find you and you didn’t answer your phone, I called Jane, figuring you were together or something. Her boyfriend answered and when I explained who I was and why I was calling, he helped me. Nice man.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. Of course. “Yeah, he’s a boy scout, that guy.”

“Clint,” Darcy says once she’s safely enclosed in her room. “Will you shoot Thor for me?”

“No, but I’ll tell Hulk to hit him for you.”

***

Darcy wakes up to several things happening in rapid succession. She gradually comes to consciousness with the feeling of Clint’s lips on her throat and his hands on her ass, which is really a very nice way to wake up. He slides his hand up her back and mutters something against her neck and she mumbles right back. This, of course, is too lovely to actually be her life, so they are immediately interrupted by a loud bang, yelling, another bang, someone shouting, “No, don’t do that! Wait!” and Tony half falling through her bedroom door, vodka sloshing everywhere. 

“Oh, Christ, _you’re here_ ,” Tony says, squinting at Clint. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with this...” He waves his bottle-laden hand back and forth between Clint and Darcy. “Can I object? I think I object.”

They stare at him for a moment, bewildered, until Bruce comes barrelling into the room, looking like he might blush himself to death. 

"Seriously," Tony says, swaying slightly. "Isn't there some kind of 'Under My Roof' rule I can enact?"

“I tried to stop him,” Bruce mumbles, half apology, half explanation. 

"What are you doing?" Darcy asks, a little angry and mostly embarrassed. 

“You mean aside from trying not to see half of Clint naked?"

"Tony, come on. Lets go," Bruce says. 

Tony ignores Bruce. “I would like to welcome you, Darcy... what is your middle name? Jesus I don’t even know your middle name.”

“Tony,” Bruce pleads.

“Anyway, welcome to the deeply flawed, emotionally stunted, seriuosly fucked up, though financially solvent, club, Darcy Something Lewis” Tony blinks at her a moment and then adds, “Not you, Barton.”

“What in the world?” Vanessa says from the doorway, peering sheepishly into the room.

“Jesus,” Clint mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Oh, hey, I remember you!” Tony says, surprising everyone and maybe mostly himself, if the look on his face is any indication.

“Classy,” Bruce mutters.

There’s a small knocking sound and Pepper’s voice rings down the hall. “Darcy?”

“We’re in here!” Clint calls and Darcy smacks his shoulder. 

“What?” He asks around a grin. “Were we trying to be inconspicuous?”

Pepper appears in the already overcrowded doorway looking elegant as ever despite the early hour and the fact that she is in her pajamas . She glances around the room once and her eyes settle on Darcy a moment before she fixes them on Tony. “Well,” is all she says, but the look she’s giving him promises many, many words later.

“What’re you doing here?” Tony asks because he may be a genius but sometimes he’s an idiot.

It is JARVIS who answers: “I took the liberty of alerting Miss Potts to your whereabouts.”

Tony looks flat out horrified and more than a little betrayed. “Et tu, JARVIS? Et tu?”

“Mrs. Lewis, I take it?” Pepper offers a hand and a warm smile to Darcy’s mom. “Apologies for all of this. I promise, we are not usually this uncivilized. Please, join us for Christmas Brunch later and let us make it up to you.”

Vanessa, who looks so confused and uncertain, simply nods.

“Darcy, I’m sorry. I’ll see you in a few hours.” Pepper turns on her heel and strides out into the hall. She pauses, looks back pointedly and says, “Tony!”

Tony shifts uncomfortably a moment and then says, “I’d better...” his voice trails off and then he follows Pepper out of the room.

Bruce shrugs, sighs and shuffles away. Vanessa looks at him as he passes, a deeply unsettled look on her face, then turns back to Darcy and, by extension, Clint, because he is still in her bed with her and somehow this is more awkward than anything that’s happened so far.

“Uh,” is all Darcy can muster, but her mother seems to have found her sense of humor, because she makes a sound that might be a laugh but might also be an exasperated huff, and leaves, closing the door behind her.

Clint looks over, face serious, and says, “So... you wanna screw around?”

“Clint!”

She does. They do.

***

Somehow, miraculously, through some kind of universal good fortune, they survive Christmas. It’s ugly and awkward and mostly a mess, but they survive it. Later, Darcy will never really be clear on how, but she’s fully anti looking gift horses in their mouths, so she just says thank you to the universe and calls it good.

Christmas brunch is a chaotic affair, which is par for the course, but as hard as she tries to pretend that she’s Totally Cool and Confident Darcy, her hands shake and her eyes are always on either her mother or Tony and she has a twisting feeling in her chest.

Tony, for his part, shows up less drunk than the last time she’d seen him, which was very probably Pepper’s doing. He doesn’t look at Darcy once and she can’t really blame him.

They dine in the same way they have all of their meals - loud and bickering and with more laughter than anyone might have expected. Natasha is in a surprisingly good mood, which means she’s taking every opportunity to sneak in a scathing remark at someone’s expense. Steve is his typical charming self and Darcy catches her mother smile at him a few times without having to fake it, which she is doing to an impressive degree. 

So far as Darcy can tell, her mother is taking all of this very well. She’s eyeballing Thor like she can’t quite believe that he’s in the same room with her and that this is the man that Jane’s shacked up with. But then he puts on a santa hat and tries to get them to sit on his lap and make wishes and Jane has to explain why that’s creepy and Darcy can see the moment that it really hits her mother, that she fully takes in the fact that he’s an alien and Cap’s been frozen for seventy years and Bruce is a giant green anger-monster. To Vanessa’s credit, she excuses herself to the bathroom and when she comes back several minutes later, she shows no signs of the panic Darcy knows was creeping in.

They exchange gifts and if her mom feels left out, she says nothing, not that she’s saying much of anything at all. Pepper, because she’s Pepper, has an impeccably wrapped box waiting under the tree for Vanessa, which turns out to be a gorgeous blue and silver pashmina. Darcy catches Pepper’s eye and gives her a look she hopes translates as gratitude.

“Good lord, Nat,” Darcy says, eyeing the other woman’s unwrapped gifts. “Did you not have enough weapons already?”

“There is no such thing.”

“Lewis, what the hell is this?” Tony says and Darcy’s eyes swing up, surprised.

She bites her lips to keep from laughing. “It’s your Christmas present.”

He holds it up and narrows his eyes, glowering at the offending item. It is a framed photo of Captain America, his jaw squared, chest out, looking like the definition of hero and there’s a loopy signature near the bottom.

Tony’s head appears around the side of the frame and he looks just as unamused as she thought he would and she suppresses her laughter again. “You got me a signed picture of Steve?”

“Don’t worry, there’s more,” she says, doing her best to crush the weird feeling in her gut and the way her brain seems to be screaming at her that he’s not avoiding her anymore and shouldn’t that mean something? 

Steve, for his part, drops his head into his hands. “That’s why you wanted me to sign that? You said it was for charity!”

“This _is_ charity!” Darcy is smiling now, unable to keep from laughing any longer.

There’s a flutter of activity from Tony’s spot on the couch and soon he’s unwrapped all of the other photos - one of each Avenger, all framed and signed. He holds up the one of Hulk and quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay, I may have fudged that one. Steve told me I couldn’t actually ask him to sign it so I had to sign it myself.” When he says nothing, Darcy smiles a softer sort of smile and adds, “I wanted to get you this insane ‘57 Lister Jag that’s rusting in a garage up in Buffalo - granted, it’s minus half the engine... and a door. But you don’t pay me that much.”

He looks away and she can’t read whatever those emotions are that flicker across his face for the briefest of moments, before he’s shut them down and put on an outraged expression. “That had better be a joke, because if you didn’t save the poor thing, I may never forgive you.”

“No joke.”

“Jesus. This is a tragedy. Where is it? We’re rescuing it tomorrow. For Christ’s sake, put it on the company card next time!”

“Do not put it on the company card,” Pepper chimes in.

“Not a problem, I don’t have one,” Darcy adds cheerfully.

“Jesus Christ!” Tony says, truly aggravated now. He stands up, carefully sets the framed image of the Hulk on the ground, mutters something she doesn’t catch and leaves. Pepper follows a moment later and Bruce makes a forced joke at Tony’s expense and everyone just moves on, because Tony will be Tony, but Darcy can’t shake the feeling that she just made things worse.

***

The following day, the team has a press event at an orphanage (Thor gets to play Santa. He is very excited.) So, of course, Darcy is left with her mother and if she doesn’t get away from the woman, she’s going to murder her. Despite evidence to the contrary, Darcy doesn’t really want to murder her mom.

In an effort to avoid jail time and/or a lengthy and embarrassing cover up job, she escapes to the kitchen and digs out some of Bruce’s good tea. The kettle’s just whistled when Pepper clears her throat from the doorway.

Startled, Darcy turns and sloshes water on the floor. “Fuck sticks.”

Pepper lifts one eyebrow.

“Sorry.”

“I’ve heard much worse.” Pepper picks up a towel from the counter and drops it on the small puddle. “Is there enough for two?”

Darcy shifts awkwardly for a moment before grabbing a second mug. “Sure.”

For several minutes, Darcy busies herself with the tea. She gets sugar and milk, she checks and rechecks the pot as the tea steeps, she puts out spoons and grabs napkins. It is, of course, futile, because very soon they are both holding mugs of black tea and saying nothing.

“Shall we sit?” Pepper looks at her with very kind eyes and Darcy wants to turn and flee, but instead she nods and follows the taller woman to the living room. They sit on opposite couches.

“This is totally weird, right?” Darcy says, not looking at Pepper.

“It won’t be forever.”

“I really am sorry, you know. I didn’t want this to happen.”

Pepper smiles a little, though she looks mostly concerned. “Why, if I may ask, were you keeping this secret?”

“I...” She has to stop and collect her thoughts for a moment. She hasn’t actually explained this to anyone other than Clint, and even then it was a stunted sort of explanation that she wasn’t sure made any sense. “Tony’s got enough baggage. He’s got all of these scars and all of this weight and I just didn’t want to add to that. I didn’t want to be another thing that happened to him that he didn’t have any control over. I didn’t want him to feel bad. And you’re all my family already, I was - am - afraid of that changing.”

Darcy fiddles awkwardly with her mug and doesn’t look at Pepper. It’s as good as she can manage, even if words don’t seem to quite encompass everything she feels.

“Darcy,” Pepper says. “I can’t promise you that Tony isn’t going to feel bad. He already does, but it isn’t because of you.”

“My mom -”

“Yes, okay, your mother handled this all very poorly, but what’s done is done. And none of that is your fault.”

They sit for a long time, drinking tea and saying nothing. There are so many things that Darcy wants to say, so many explanations and excuses, but she can’t seem to find the words to say them. Finally, she asks, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

A look of surprise flashes across Pepper’s face. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Dude, I just completely fucked over your whole life.”

To Darcy’s surprise, Pepper laughs. “Darcy, this is hardly the worst thing to happen. Or the least expected. Speaking of, we need to set up a time to discuss your trust fund.”

With very wide, very confused eyes, Darcy stares. “I don’t have one of those.” And then because she suddenly feels very indignant about this, feels like it needs to be clear she doesn’t want anything of Tony’s, she adds, “I don’t _want_ one of those.” 

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t have something set up for this? It was pretty much inevitable, really. You _have_ met Tony.” Pepper stands and smiles. “Although, I suppose we’ll have to stop calling it the Accidental Stark Fund now.”

She doesn’t have anything to say to that and when Pepper leaves, Darcy sits staring out through the windows, watching the clouds float across the sky, until JARVIS tells her that everyone is back and she retreats to her rooms, choosing her mother’s company over running into Tony.

***

Two days later, Darcy’s on her way to drop her mother at the airport (thank all of the gods of all of the things) when she finds herself unexpectedly knocked to the ground. One minute she is standing at the curb, waiting for Happy to bring the car around and the next, she’s flat on her back, a sharp pain in her leg. Blearily, she reaches down, seeking the stinging feeling and finds a weird metal object embedded in her thigh. Someone screams and the world goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading. You guys are seriously the best ever.


	10. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So. This chapter was originally two chapters, but upon rereading and editing I realized it didn't make any sense to split it up like that. So, now it's one long chapter. Which also means it's the last chapter. Insert sad face here. There is an epilogue to follow, though, so expect that to happen soon. Happy reading! And again, because I don't think it is possible to say it enough, thank you for reading and for kudos-ing and for commenting. It has been a pleasure to share this story with you and I adore all of you.

When she wakes up, it’s to a dull throbbing in her head and a sharp twinge in her leg. Her eyelids feel heavy, but once she pries them open her vision is sharp and clear. 

And holy fuck, she’s been kidnapped. Kidnapped!? Is that a thing that happens to her now? Can she expect a regular rotation of Darcynapping attempts? Is it a Stark thing? Do people just like abducting Starks? Mentally, Darcy tells herself to shut up because obviously the sedative is still making her a little loopy. No one even knows about the Stark connection, so this is something else. Probably.

Whoever took her has tried to disguise her surroundings, that much obvious. The bed is large but completely bare, there are no pictures on the walls, but there are nail holes where they once hung. A heavy black tarp hangs across what must be a window and the door to the bathroom has been removed. And despite all of this, Darcy is completely certain that she’s in a shitty motel room, but the musty smell in the air and the layer of dust on the desk and night table tells her that it hasn’t been used in a very long time. 

Darcy tries to remember all of the things S.H.I.E.L.D. taught her about abduction scenarios and hostage situations, which wasn’t all that much, really, because she wasn’t a field agent. She takes stock of the room and of herself (feet and hands tied, clothes intact, ouch my head) and for the most part she’s okay. There don’t appear to be any cameras, but that doesn’t mean anything. The phone and TV are missing from the room, not that she would have expected them to work.

She wonders if her phone is anywhere nearby, because if it is, Tony is certainly tracking that. She actively does not think about her mom and what might be happening to her. 

Anxiously, Darcy sits up, the ropes on her limbs making it more of a disabled seal flop than anything resembling sitting up, but whatever. Up is better than down. 

Carefully, Darcy hops across the room. It’s tricky because her whole leg is sore and the muscles twitch and spasm when she moves. Not seeing her purse anywhere, she gets a grip on the tarp and yanks. It comes away from the wall with a whoosh and she finds herself looking at a piece of plywood that’s been nailed up over what must be a window.

“I figured you try that,” someone says from behind her and Darcy turns to see the smug face of... she’s pretty sure she’s supposed to know that guy, but she just can’t place him. 

He crosses to her, grabs her by the arm and shoves her onto the bed. He looks at her for a long minute, eyes scrutinizing and Darcy gets the impression that he’s waiting for something. When nothing happens, he sighs and says, “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

Darcy shrugs. “Am I supposed to?”

He slaps her then, the sting of it making her eyes water and her breath catch in her chest. Defiantly, she looks right back at him, and then she sees it. 

“Oh, it’s you,” Darcy says. “I think I liked you better with the creeper ‘stache.”

He hits her again, this time with a closed fist and pain blossoms across her jaw, the metallic taste of blood fills her mouth. But she looks right back at him, refusing to cower. He curses and stalks out of the room. 

Alone again, Darcy fumbles to her feet, searching the room for anything useful. She knows now why she’s here, though she has no idea what the former Snidely Whiplash wants to accomplish exactly. Likely, he just wants to make her pay in some way for embarrassing him in front of Tony. It’s not an encouraging scenario. 

The man comes back shortly after that, a sleek black Glock in his waistband. His face is sort of red, like maybe he’d been yelling recently, but when he speaks it is with a voice so soft it sends goosebumps up Darcy’s arms.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

She has nothing of use to her, the search of the room having been unsuccessful. The way his fingers are trailing over the grip of his gun, Darcy’s stomach clenches and she wishes she had found something - anything - that might maybe have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a weapon.

“Sit down,” he tells her and she does. 

“I wonder how you managed to wheedle your way into Stark’s good graces.” The man muses as he paces in front of her. “Maybe it was by spreading your little legs.”

“Gross,” Darcy can’t help but mutter.

“Maybe it’s about blackmail? Maybe you have something on him.”

Darcy scoffs. “Right. Like there’s anything Tony’s done that hasn’t been plastered across the Internet.”

The man scowls at her, pausing in his pacing. He draws the gun from his waistband and waves it around a little too close her her face. “I worked for him for six years and do you know what I got? Nothing. Every one of my designs was ignored or scrapped. Not a single one was ever taken seriously. And then in waltzes some little know-it-all bitch and everything goes to shit!”

“Maybe they would have taken you seriously if you designed things that work.”

To her surprise, the man starts to laugh. “Oh, darlin’, that airship design wasn’t a mistake.”

“You used the wrong dimensions on purpose?”

“It was all a ploy. I was going to prove that he was unfit to head R&D, that he didn’t even so much as look at the designs, that his little hero act was making his company fail. But then you ruined that. That’s when I started to notice you. I saw you using the private elevators and sneaking off with that hired muscle that’s always around the building and coffee dates with Dr Banner. You’re just working your way through them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out you’ve implanted yourself pretty solidly with these people.”

Lovely. She’s been hoisted by her own petard. 

“But I have other prospects now,” he continues. “There are people who appreciate my brilliance, who can see the potential of my ideas. And they pay better too.”

“Oh... _Oh!_ ," Darcy says, having just managed to put two and two together and get an algebra problem. “You made that device that shut down Tony’s suit!”

“Of course I did,” he says proudly.

“And you sold it to Azazel?” She can’t keep the insulting and disbelieving tone out of her question and he smacks her across the jaw again for it. Her face explodes in pain, the area already tender.

“We’re going for a drive,” the man says, apparently done talking.

He manhandles her into a standing position and Darcy makes it as hard as possible out of spite. Twice she topples over on purpose and takes some small satisfaction in the way it clearly annoys him. 

He drags her out of the room, but her feet are tied too tightly to really be able to walk at all, so she has to hop, which is murder on her leg and when she falls in the hallway it isn’t on purpose.

“You dumb bitch,” the man says, lifting her up roughly, his hand tight around her throat. “Unless you want this to be much worse for you, you better start behaving.”

“Look, buddy, unless you want to run a one legged race here, having my legs tied is counter productive.”

With a curse, he draws a knife out of his pocket and slices through the rope. She sighs and stretches her legs out, rolling her ankles around.

“Keep moving,” he says and pushes her forward, the muzzle of the gun in her back.

She does a mental run through of some of the hand to hand Clint showed her, considers which moves might be useful, and curses herself because not once did those lessons end in a way that wasn’t sex. Stupid sexy ninja moves. Stupid weak willpower in the face of a sweaty sexy ninja.

They emerge from the motel into a very dark parking lot. There is no moon and the only light she can see is coming from the car that he’s left running. The trunk is open and Darcy sends up a plea to the universe that he puts her in it. For the first time in a long time, the universe doesn’t tell her to suck it and the man instructs her to climb in. She puts up an argument, tries to sound convincing, and whimpers when he forces her inside anyway. As soon as the lid shuts, she gets to work.

Too dark to really see, she wasn’t able to get a good a look at the vehicle, but she’s pretty sure it’s a mid nineties Ford sedan. A Taurus probably, judging by the size of the trunk, but she’s not positive. It’s easy to pull up the carpet and find the trunk release cable, but she’s in the middle of nowhere and jumping out of the trunk only to be shot in the back doesn’t sound like any fun at all. So she waits. 

They drive for a while, maybe twenty minutes, Darcy’s trying to count, but it’s hard to be sure with the way her heart is pounding. The car slows to a stop, before accelerating again. _Stop sign._ The next stop sign comes again soon and then a third. They must be nearing more populated areas, she thinks. Cautiously, carefully, she tugs the cable, keeping a tight grip on the edge of the trunk lid so it doesn’t fly up and give her away. There are lights now, she can see a few houses dotting the landscape and off to the right there must be a town, because she swears she can see a McDonald’s sign. The car turns toward the town and Darcy’s heart races even faster. As they get closer, she can hear the rush of traffic from a nearby highway and when the blinker goes on and the car starts to slow, Darcy knows this is it. There is no way she’s sticking around for the cross country trip. She has to go now.

As the car rolls to a stop, Darcy inches the lid up. She keeps her grip on it, and slides out of the trunk, her feet hitting the ground unsteadily. She trips and falls, but manages to bring the trunk lid down as she goes. It latches closed as she faceplants onto the concrete and the car pulls forward, making the turn and merging onto the on ramp.

Aware that she’s in the middle of the road and thankful that there are no cars careening toward her, Darcy climbs to her feet and sets off in a dead run for the nearest anything, which turns out to be a gas station. There is a truck parked at one of the pumps, but the owner must be inside the mini mart, because there is no one around at all when she rushes up to it. Educated by many a horror movie, Darcy does not calm to a walk nor does she feel relieved simply by being within sight of the place - that’s when the bad guy jumps out at the last minute and slices you to tiny pieces, because you had the gall to think you were safe. She knows.

Darcy bursts through the doors into the too bright store, hands still tied and covered in dirt and grime and blood and panting heavily. “I need a phone,” is the first thing she manages to say.

The men in the store stare at her, unsure of what to do or unable to process what exactly is happening. No one moves and then quite suddenly, a woman shrieks and runs at Darcy, grasping her around the shoulders and leading her to a chair behind the counter.

“What the heck is wrong with you two?” The woman says. “Call 911, for Pete’s sake!”

The younger man, a tall gangly guy of about Darcy’s age, jumps to attention and digs his cell phone out of a pocket. 

“Are you okay?” The woman asks, inspecting Darcy’s face. “Jim, give me your knife.” With Jim’s knife, the woman cuts the rope from Darcy’s wrists. “Hon, what’s your name? I’m Nancy. That’s Jim.”

“Darcy. I’m Darcy. Can I use the phone?”

“Yeah. It’s right here.”

Nancy hands her a clunky old cordless phone. Darcy’s fingers shake with the effort of hitting the right buttons and she considers that maybe she’s in shock. Maybe she’ll get one of those neat shiny blankets. And aren’t you supposed to elevate a person’s feet if they’re in shock? Or is it that they’re supposed to be in the recovery position? Should she be laying down?

“Do you want me to dial for you?” Jim asks, his tone heavy with concern.

“Okay,” Darcy says, letting him take the phone and telling him the numbers. Jim dials and then holds the phone up to Darcy’s ear for her and that’s when she realizes that she’s clutched Nancy’s wrists in her hands in some sort of death grip. She can’t seem to let go.

“Barton,” he says, clipped and tight.

“Clint.”

“Darcy? Jesus Christ, where are you?”

She can hear the utter cummotion that erupts in the background on Clint’s end of the line and she kind of wants to laugh, but somehow all that comes out is a sob.

“Darcy, where are you?” He says slowly, calmly and she wants to answer, but she can’t, she doesn’t know. 

“Where am I?” Darcy asks Nancy.

“Leisure, Pennsylvania,” the woman answers with maybe too much softness, like she’s holding back her pity and failing. “The Chevron station on Hyde Street.”

“Okay, Darcy, it’s okay,” Clint is saying. “We’re on our way. I’m not hanging up, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” She pries her hands away from Nancy and clutches the phone to her head, like maybe that can magically transport him to her. “It’s been a bad day, Clint.”

He huffs something like a laugh and she can hear him moving around, getting ready to leave. “Been more than one day, babe. You’ve been gone nearly thirty-six hours.”

She lets that sink in, tries not to think about how worried he must have been, how worried they all must have been. “My mom...” She doesn’t know how to finish that so she just sort of leaves it open, lets the words hang.

“She’s here. I’d say she’s fine, but between your vanishing act and Tony’s wrath, I don’t think fine is the right word.”

“Oh god. Has he been terrible?”

“I’m not the person to ask. I’ve been in agreement with him on every count so far.” Clint pauses a minute, says something to someone else that she can’t make out and then he’s back on the phone. “I’ve gotta ask, Coulson is going to take the phone away in a minute if I don’t. Do you know who took you?”

“Yeah. Guy from SI R&D. Used to have a creepy mustache. He designed a shitty hover craft.”

There’s more commotion in the background and then Clint huffs. “Yeah, we know who you mean. Where is he now?”

“No idea. I made a run for it when we stopped at a stop sign and he kept going.”

“He didn’t try and bring you back?”

“Clint, can we not talk about this right now?”

“Yeah, sorry. Work mode. It’s keeping me from going crazy.”

Darcy smiles a little at that. “You weren’t worried, were you?” 

Clint doesn’t respond for a long minute and she worries that maybe the connection was lost, but then he says, “Thor and Tony are going to beat me there. I have to go silent while we lift, but stay on the line okay?”

“Okay.” 

Things happen sort of quickly after that. The local police show up a minute later, followed by an ambulance that looks like maybe it should have been retired twenty years ago, but the EMTs are nice and they do give her a shiny tin foil blanket, which is pretty neat. The cops want to drag her off to the station and the EMTs want to take her to the hospital, but Darcy wants to stay right there and wait for her cavalry. She’s right in the middle of telling the cops that no, she will not go anywhere, because her friends are going to be here any minute and it is very important that she wait for them, when the air crackles and lighting splits the sky. There is the immediate rumble of thunder and Thor drops to the ground.

“Darcy!” He says, arms and smile wide.

She scrambles to her feet, phone still clutched in her hand, and launches herself at him, feeling safe for the first time since she woke up in that motel room. He wraps his huge arms around her for a minute and lifts her off her feet, his laugh is loud and boisterous, and Darcy smiles into his chest. 

“Thor’s here,” she says in the general direction of the phone.

“I noticed,” she hears Clint say.

Thor places her back on the ground, but Darcy keeps her face buried in his chest, unwilling to let go. 

“Now, you must tell me,” Thor says drawing her to arms length and crouching so he can meet her eyes. “In which direction did you last see this man go?”

She points to the highway and she describes the car, but then he’s swinging his hammer and she is suddenly terrified of being there without him, without something familiar to see and touch and hear.

“Wait,” she says, a little surprised and maybe ashamed of how frantic her voice sounds. “Will you stay until the others get here?”

But he doesn’t have to answer, because just as he’s about to, Iron Man lands with a deafening crunch. Thor squeezes her shoulder one last time, nods at Tony, and disappears into the dark sky.

“Tony’s here,” she says into the phone.

“Go easy on him,” Clint says.

Iron Man’s faceplate slides up and Tony meets her eyes, his face is drawn and sallow and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. And there they stand, staring at each other, saying nothing. She bites her lip, unsure how to react, unsure what to say. Probably she should have some great emotional reaction (Or maybe he should?) but that’s not really how she (They?) do things and all she can think is that he looks like shit.

“You look like shit,” Darcy says, still sucking at self-censoring.

Tony laughs. “No sleep for the wicked. You’re looking spectacularly terrible, yourself, Lewis.”

Darcy inches slowly closer so she doesn’t have to keep living this metaphor quite so acutely. He is so tall in the suit and she has to look up, something she’s not really used to. “Well, I’m not sure you’ve been briefed, but I was kidnapped. By one of your employees. I’m going to sue.”

“No point, really,” Tony says, off the cuff, and then keeps talking, rapid fire, typical Tony. He turns toward the cops and the EMTs and Nancy and Jim and that skinny guy. “You missed a lot, Darcy. I was on TV again and Pepper picked out a very nice photo of you for the missing posters, not that there were any actual posters, because, who uses paper anymore, but there were advertisements. And a press conference.”

“Oh no. You held a press conference?!” Darcy chases behind him, as he descends upon the poor hapless cluster of people.

“Of course I held a press conference. You were kidnapped. Was I supposed to just cross my fingers and ask god to bring you back? Although, I did ask the only god I know to help so maybe that counts.”

The idea of a press conference and Tony’s spotty history with press conferences is making Darcy’s stomach turn. “What did you say?” She asks, knowing that he can see right through her to the question she is too afraid to actually ask.

Tony doesn’t answer, just stares down at the small collection of people huddled near the back of the ambulance.

“Which one of you is in charge here in this little Mayberry? And how, honestly, _how_ did you not realize that this is the same woman who's been plastered on every news program in the country?”

No one answers, but it isn’t because they have nothing to say, it’s because there is the sudden bang-ping of bullets lodging into the side of the ambulance. Everyone dives for cover while Tony turns and starts unleashing hell. 

Darcy scrambles around the back of the ambulance and crouches by the tire, the cops are edging around the front, their guns drawn. She doesn’t know where Jim has gotten to, but Nancy is next to her, shaking and shrieking.

“Hey, Nancy, it’s okay. “Iron Man’s got this.”

Nancy nods, takes a breath and thankfully stops squeaking. 

There’s a mighty boom and then the night falls silent. They wait a moment, and Darcy’s half expecting something to blow up or go whizzing past her head, but when nothing happens, she peers around the back of the ambulance. Tony’s hovering near the convenience store and the quinjet is setting down in the field behind it.

“Come on,” she tells Nancy and they crawl out from behind the vehicle. There’s a lump of bloody person on the ground and Jim and the skinny guy are clearly visible through the broken windows of the store. They are both wielding fire extinguishers and smoke is wafting out of every opening.

“Hon,” Nancy says. “When you say cavalry, you aren’t kidding.”

Darcy chuckles, but she’s distracted, looking around the quinjet for Clint. He was probably piloting so she figures he’ll be out last, but one by one, the team files out and no Clint. Cap is on the ground first, jumping out of the hatch before the blades have even slowed. Natasha is right behind him and while Steve heads for Tony, Natasha makes a beeline for Darcy. Bruce ambles to the ground once the blades are still and Coulson is right behind him, phone plastered to his ear. Several moments pass and no one else emerges.

“Are you okay?” Nat asks, looking her over. At Darcy’s nod, she seems satisfied, but doesn’t move away and doesn’t stop making that serious spy face, which is actually just a blank expression, but whatever, Darcy’s gotten semi-adequate at reading her non-expression expressions.

“Where’s Clint?” Darcy asks Natasha and she knows there’s a hint of fear in her voice.

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Making a grand entrance.”

“What does that mean?”

“There were some... extenuating circumstances,” Nat says. “He had to get creative.”

“Darcy!” Tony calls. “I found your wandering parakeet!”

Darcy looks around to find Clint repelling down the side of the tall building across the street, bow slung over his back. He drops the last several feet and Darcy fights the urge to run across the street and tackle him. Instead, she crosses her arms and waits.

Nat huffs a laugh and pats her on the back, muttering something about them being disgusting, before jogging over to talk to Bruce.

“Took you long enough,” Darcy says, arms still crossed.

“So much traffic,” Clint replies, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “And your dad was horrible the entire drive. No more road trips ever; that guy’s just a dick.”

“I heard that!” Darcy hears Tony bellow through Clint’s earpiece.

Clint smiles wide and steps in close, his hands coming up to frame her face, thumb tracing gently over the bruises on her cheek and jaw. He’s got this expression that’s maybe relief and maybe anger and maybe something she’s scared to name. “Darcy, I...” He starts, but then she leans in and cuts him off with a kiss.

“Me too,” she says softly, after a moment.

He doesn’t say anything, chooses instead to lean in and kiss her again. It’s gentle at first, soft and sweet, and then the reality of the situation hits her and she can’t get close enough; she just wants to crawl under his skin and live there. She bites his lip, slides her hands up the back of his neck, fingers carding through his hair, pressing her body against his, squeezing so tight she might have bruises.

Finally, she pulls away and smiles sardonically. “It’s your turn to get punched in the face now.”

“I... uh... We should go.” Steve says from behind them, his face roughly the same shade as a lobster.

“What Captain Chastity here is saying is that you two are breaking public decency laws and it’s disgusting,” Tony adds. "Also, I changed my mind. You may continue seeing each other."

Clint opens his mouth to reply, but Thor takes that moment to land right next to them with a thundering crack. He has a man dangling over his shoulder. Thor stands him up in some floppy display, as though he’s reenacting Weekend at Bernies, and props the man’s head up by yanking on his hair.

“Is this the man that apprehended you, Darcy?”

It is. It absolutely is, but Darcy has a moment of sheer hilarity, picturing Thor dashing off and bringing back unconscious, dangling men, one by one, until he happens across the right one.

When she manages to nod and say that yes, that’s him, Thor hoists the man up again and delivers him to Coulson, smiling his broad golden retriever grin.

***

They manage to limp back to the tower, Bruce poking and prodding and being generally doctory the entire time. Somehow - probably due to the sharp drop in adrenaline - Darcy falls asleep before they make it back to New York.

It’s daylight out when she drifts back into consciousness. She’s alone in her bed and wearing her pajamas, but there’s a dent in the pillow next to her, the top sheet is twisted into a messy knot and there is a lone sock in a ball at the end of the bed - all signs that Clint has been there. 

Throwing on a robe, Darcy makes her way to the kitchen where breakfast smells are making her stomach grumble. Clint’s making bacon and pancakes and her mother is fussing over a pot of coffee.

“Hey,” Darcy says, her voice scratchy.

“Oh my god!” Vanessa exclaims and launches herself at Darcy, hugging her tightly, fussing over the bruises on her face. “Are you okay? I was so worried!”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Face hurts, but I’m fine.”

“We made breakfast,” her mother says, like maybe that will make everything right in the world.

“We?” Darcy shoots Clint a look, but he just shrugs.

They eat and Vanessa calms down the more they talk. It’s an effort not to say too much to her mother, because Clint’s right there and she wants to tell him everything, but Darcy keeps to vague descriptions and broad explanations. It’s better this way; the less Vanessa knows, the better.

After breakfast and about a million reassurances that she’s okay, Darcy and Clint leave her mother in the apartment and go upstairs for the debrief. They arrive in the common room early and Darcy goes straight to the wet bar. It isn’t nerves, exactly, more like jitters. She’s jittery. And it doesn’t have anything to do with retelling her ordeal, because, yes that was terrible, but she’s pretty proud of how she handled herself. Darcy will tell that story with satisfaction and probably sound effects. The thing that’s got her heart rate up has been bugging her since last night.

Everyone wanders in shortly after and Tony makes a beeline for the bar right along with her. He clinks his glass against hers with an approving nod.

“I know you told,” she says in a low voice just in case she’s wrong. “They’re all being way too... I don’t know, but I can tell.”

Tony pulls a face like he’s just been insulted. “I would never.”

“Oh, god it’s worse than I thought. Who else did you tell? Coulson? Fury?!”

But Tony doesn’t answer, he just raises his eyebrows and wanders away.

“Okay,” Coulson says and everyone sits and makes faces like they’re paying attention. They get right down to brass tacks and Clint sits close, but not touching, while she goes through everything she can remember about the last few days. She’s grateful that Clint isn’t the type to hover, because she’d probably slap him if he thought he needed to be the supportive man. She thinks she might have Natasha to thank for that. 

As soon as she’s done speaking, she slugs back the rest of her drink and lets the conversation wash over her. 

They’ve identified the man who took her as Greg Kellogg, who is currently rotting in a cell on the helicarrier. The man who attacked them at the gas station, however, is another story altogether.

“So,” Darcy says after the explanations have been doled out. “Bad sniper guy was with AIM? And he was just trying to cover Kellogg’s tracks when he started blowing holes in the gas station?”

“Right,” Coulson says. “Kellogg had promised AIM one of the same electromagnetic pulse devices -”

“I thought we had already explained that it isn’t actually an EMP,” Tony interrupts.

“But when he couldn’t recover the one that Clint blew up -”

“You’re welcome.”

“He was given a small window in which to create another. When he couldn’t do it, AIM sent someone to put the pressure on and keep them from being linked to Kellogg. Kellogg became desperate to get the first one back. He didn’t know Clint had blown it up -”

“You’re welcome again.”

“Because obviously he doesn’t know Clint,” Natasha says with a stern look.

“Hey!”

Coulson continues: “Kellogg resorted to grabbing you with the intent of trading you for the not-just-an-EMP.” He pauses a moment and then forges on and Darcy gets the feeling she’s not going to like what comes next. “But then we made the huge mistake of failing to stop Tony from holding a press conference and the terms changed, but that ended up being moot, because you escaped.”

Darcy looks around the room, scrutinizing everyone. Steve won’t meet her eyes, Natasha is actually smirking, Bruce has a resigned sort of look on his face and Thor is grinning ear to ear. She hazards a look at Tony and he’s intently watching the ceiling.

“God damn it, Tony! It’s public knowledge now?!”

Tony manages to look sort of sorry and says, “No! Not exactly. You know how I am with press conferences. I just say things. Things just get said.”

“What did you say?!” Darcy is definitely not yelling.

“Don’t yell at me,” Tony says, his tone drifting over to scolding. “I may have sort of implied that you are very important to the team and the media may have run with that in an entirely unexpected and unholy direction.”

Darcy glares at him a minute and finally just says, “Ew.”

“But,” Tony follows up rather quickly. “Everyone here knows the truth.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Thor adds.

“Yeah,” says Natasha. “Now you know where to go if you ever need a kidney.”

“To her mother?” Bruce asks. He points at Tony. “Because those kidneys are of no use to anyone.”

“Thanks,” Tony says dryly.

Darcy pinches the bridge of her nose and fights the headache that’s developing behind her eyes. She looks at Bruce. “Remember when I said I wasn’t telling? See? This is what happens.”

Bruce just shrugs.

“Worse things could have happened to you in your life than this, you know,” Tony says patulantly.

Darcy grins very widely and crosses over to where Tony is sulkily leaning against the wall. She stands on tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek. “Nope. You’re the very worst,” she says with a wink.

Tony smiles broadly back.

They finish up with the debrief and Natasha offers to take Vanessa to the airport tomorrow and instill in her a firm understanding of what the words confidentiality agreement mean. 

And Darcy, well, Darcy makes for her bathtub where she intends to stay for the rest of the day. And if he’s lucky, Clint might just get an invitation.


	11. Epilogue

Darcy marches resolutely into the shop, turning off the music as she goes. Her socks slip in a bit of motor oil and she curses, crumpling the manilla folder in her hand a little tighter. She really should have taken a second to put on shoes.

“May I help you?” Tony says from underneath the Lister Jag.

“What the hell is this?” She knows she sounds like a snarling asshole, but she sort of feels like a snarling asshole so whatever.

A very dirty, very confused Tony slides out from under the rear end and looks up at her. “I’m going to hazard a guess... I mean, I’m not sure, but I think that’s an envelope. Presumably there are papers inside.”

Darcy tosses it at him and feels a little bit satisfied with the way it smacks him in the head.

“I don’t want it,” she bites out.

He climbs to his feet, wiping dirty hands on a rag and swigging green gunk from a water bottle, his eyes on her the whole time. She hates when he does that.

“Don’t give me that _I’m challenging you to challenge me_ look,” Darcy snaps. “I said I didn’t want it and meant it.”

He breezes past her, the envelope still on the floor. There’s a casualness to the way he’s reacting and it’s pissing her off even more than the contents of that envelope.

“So, what?” She asks. “You’re just going to ignore me?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to ignore you.”

“Tony.”

“Darcy.”

“I’m just going to give it back.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t. There are all sorts of complicated legal loopholes to prevent you from doing exactly that.”

“Then I’m giving it away.”

“Fine.” He grabs a wrench off the table and tosses it to her. “I could use a hand with this.”

“What part of I do not want it are you missing?”

“Too bad!” His voice has ratcheted up unexpectedly and Darcy goes still because he doesn’t yell, not normally, and it’s always sort of jarring when he raises his voice. “Too bad,” he says again, quieter. “It’s _yours_.” There’s something in his voice, something deeper than she had expected, and she deflates.

They don’t say anything for a long moment and Darcy thinks that maybe she finally gets it. He isn’t just giving her money and property and stocks and rights to things she has no idea what to do with - he’s giving her her birthright and that means something, even if she doesn’t fully understand it yet.

“It’s part of the Stark Welcome Package,” he says, finally, with a lopsided smirk. “It’s a little late, but better that than never, right?”

Darcy offers a crooked grin in relpy and apology. “I’d hate to see what the rest of the Welcome Package entails.”

“Daddy issues and inferiority complexes, mostly.”

“I don’t have any of those.”

He makes a face at her that might mean he thinks she’s full of shit and says, “Well, that’s a situation that has to be rectified. Grab a creeper,” he says, kicking the wheeled trolley in question toward her. “And lets see if I can’t fuck up your psyche a little bit.”

“Bring it on, old man.”

He doesn’t manage to fuck up her psyche, but then again, he doesn’t try very hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. I hope you all enjoyed this little adventure. It's been so much fun sharing it with you all. Thanks again for all of your comments and for reading this madness.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. It just sort of happened. My friend isis_uf suggested that I call it What Happens in Bangkok Totally Doesn't Stay in Bangkok and I love that title, but then this story got a little less kitschy and it didn't fit anymore. However, it's a great title and I think it deserves a mention. 
> 
> Anyway, yes, this is exactly what you think it is and I'm still a little surprised I wrote it and that it is as long as it is. A prologue, ten chapters, and an epilogue! Phew.
> 
> So I hope you like it and feedback is always appreciated. Thanks!


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